With no word yet on when people will even be able to return to New Orleans, broadcasters say they can't project when they'll resume normal business or what the financial impact will be. Hearst-Argyle Television withdrew its Q3 guidance to Wall Street, and Entercom followed suit after the market closed yesterday.

"The extraordinary impact of Hurricane Katrina will obviously have severe economic consequences in the region, and adversely affect WDSU's business operations for some time," said CFO Harry Hawks. "In the wake of this tragic event, we are evaluating the potential impact on the financial results of the Company and, accordingly, we are withdrawing our previously issued earnings guidance for the quarter ended September 30, 2005," Hawks added. In its Q2 conference call (7/29/05 TVBR #148) Hearst-Argyle projected Q3 revenues of 163-172 million. While that has now been withdrawn, the company has not issued new guidance.

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Entercom withdrew the guidance it had issued last month (8/10/05 RBR #156) due to the impact of Katrina on its New Orleans stations. Exclusive of that market, which normally accounts for about 6% of its revenues, Entercom says it expects to post revenue gains at the upper end of its previous guidance of a 3-4% revenue gain. Entercom and Clear Channel are booking some revenues from ads running on their simulcast in New Orleans, such as insurance company announcements, but there's no indication when regular broadcasting and business will resume. "The size and scope of this is unprecedented. We don't even try to put timelines on it," Entercom CFO Steve Fisher told RBR/TVBR.

Emmis Communications had just finished its fiscal Q2 before the hurricane hit and has not yet issued guidance for the current quarter. Company spokeswoman Kate Snedeker says the company is continuing to talk to potential buyers for its remaining TV stations, including WVUE-TV New Orleans and the hurricane is not expected to delay those sale announcements. Liberty Corporation, whose WLOX-TV Biloxi was damaged by the storm, doesn't provide quarterly guidance. Besides, it has a deal pending to sell the entire company to privately-owned Raycom. A Tribune spokesman says it has insurance for lost business and that lost revenues at WGNO-TV & WNOL-TV New Orleans won't be material to a company as large as Tribune. That's likely the case for the other large public companies with stations in New Orleans, including TV owners Viacom and Belo and radio owner Clear Channel (in Biloxi as well). As for numbers, a CCU spokeswoman says "it's too early to assess the impact." Citadel, which also has a large radio cluster in New Orleans, did not respond to RBR/TVBR's requests for comment.

RBR observation:
No one is even projecting when life will return to anything resembling normal in these hard-hit markets, so projecting losses at this point is pretty much impossible. The only thing you can say for certain is that they will be big. According to BIAfn VP Mark Fratrik, New Orleans was expected to have 110.8 million in TV revenues in 2005 and 73.3 million in radio revenues - - those projections, of course, made before Hurricane Katrina. Estimates for Biloxi-Gulfport had been 21.4 million for TV and 12.5 million for radio. He says it's too early to try to estimate the storm's impact. "The question is how soon will people come back, how quickly will they rebuild? I think it's all so up in the air that it's hard to put a number on that," Fratrik told us.