NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2009 (Xinhua News Agency) -- News Corp. (NASDAQ:NWS) , the New York-based media giant, reported on Wednesday an 11 percent increase in third- quarter profit, beating analysts' estimates on box-office gains from films including "Ice Age."

Net income rose to 571 million U.S. dollars, or 22 cents a share, from 515 million dollars, or 20 cents, a year earlier, the company said.

Revenue dropped 4.1 percent to 7.2 billion dollars, compared with estimates of 7.21 billion dollars.

Film-unit profit rose 56 percent to 391 million dollars while profit at the TV unit that includes stations and the Fox broadcast network declined 54 percent to 38 million dollars.

"The economies in which we do business are clearly in better shape than they were a year ago," Murdoch said in the statement.

"We have further positioned our operations to take advantage of the improvements we are seeing globally," he added.