The firm that provided Channel Four's cricket coverage today looked set to benefit from strong demand for its DVDs of the Ashes series.

Television Corporation, which owns sports programming supplier Sunset & Vine and ball tracking system Hawk-Eye, reported encouraging demand for its footage showing England's victory against Australia.

Although broadcaster Sky recently won the rights to the live coverage of test matches from 2006, and seems likely to produce its own footage, Television Corp said its good reputation left it well-placed to win future deals.

It came as the firm reported operating profits on continuing operations of £154,000 for the six months to Thursday, June 30 against losses of £831,000 last time, before costs linked to a financial restructuring. Coverage of the European Poker Tour and football for Five contributed to a 20 per cent rise in sports revenues.

Although this included only a "modest" contribution from the cricket coverage as the tournament occurred after the end of the period.

As well as its sports operations, Television Corp is known for programmes such as Traffic Cops and Worst Driver, and this year aired drama The Government Inspector about the death of Government scientist Dr David Kelly.

It recently warned on profits after saying that its pitches for new reality TV shows in the US had not resulted in big-money deals with any of the major networks there.

Television Corp said today that the transformation of its financial position over the past 18 months had allowed it to invest in creative teams and contributed to a 26% rise in UK programme revenues.

A review under the leadership of new chief executive Peter Salmon, who joined in July, saw it dispose of broadcasting business Visions and reshape its management team.

Turnover from continuing operations increased to £22 million from £17.4 million.

The group said the second half of its financial year had started well, with new commissions including a prime time BBC1 series on pets and a new four-part Real Crimes series for ITV.