The improvement from its commercial arm brings the BBC a bumper return to offset the belt-tightening resulting from its lower than expected licence fee settlement earlier this year.
In addition, it benefited from the £96.3m Worldwide invested in commissioning BBC programmes this year, up from £89m last year.
BBC Worldwide's profits from global channels leapt from £6.9m to £20.9m while revenues climbed from £166.1m to £169m. Its 28 channels are available in more than 259m homes around the world, and include the UKTV joint venture with Virgin Media.
Its most profitable division was global TV sales, where profits climbed from £33.7m to £40.2m and revenues from £188.9m to £216.4m. Successful titles included 'Doctor Who' series 2, 'Robin Hood' and 'Planet Earth'.
The magazines division experienced broadly flat profits at £20m and revenues at £171.3m.
However, its digital media sales division's losses grew from £1.6m to £3.9m.
.jpg)
.jpg)