Beasley Broadcast Group has quite a few medium and small market clusters, but only two big ones. The stars must have been in alignment in Q2 because it was those two big markets, Philadelphia and Miami, which were on fire for Beasley.
In the company’s conference call after announcing Q2 financials, CFO Caroline Beasley told analysts how the company’s clusters compared to the market average in the City of Brotherly Love and The Magic City. “The Philly market total revenue declined 2.7% and that compares with our cluster revenue, which increased around 6%. Our cluster increase was driven by local and national was down in our cluster,” she noted. The CFO cited strong ratings performance by WRDW-FM “Wired 96.5.”
“Now moving on to Miami, the market saw a 5.2% decline and that compares to our cluster, which increased 4.8%. for the quarter. Our revenue increase was driven by national, as local was only slightly up,” Beasley said.
While the company’s smaller markets didn’t do as well, coming in close to flat as a group, Beasley noted that the clusters in the other five markets which have Miller Kaplan reports outperformed on a combined basis – up 1.5% against a decline of 3.5% for the markets.
But looking back, the CFO told analysts that advertising decelerated throughout Q2, with the slowdown felt most in the automotive and telecommunications categories. Auto was up 16% for the quarter, but it had been pacing up 57% at the beginning of the quarter, before the impact was felt from the supply chain disruption resulting from the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
RBR-TVBR observation: Still a very frothy marketplace for advertising, although auto may get back to normal in a few weeks. Note that Beasley’s strength was driven by local in Philly, but by national in Miami.
