But then, political was huge in 2010, so Q3 of 2011 saw a 5.6% decrease in gross revenues at Barrington Broadcast Group to $31.9 million. Broadcast cash flow declined 20.5% to $9.1 million.
Local ad revenues, excluding political, were up 7% to $18.9 million, national rose 6.8% to $7.1 million and retransmission consent fees gained 16.1% to $2.5 million. But all that wasn’t enough to counter a drop in political revenues from$3.5 million to $0.3 million.
Those figures are all based on grow revenues. Net revenues were down 4.8% in Q3 to $27.4 million.
Auto was a strong point for Barrington in Q3, despite the impact of supply chain problems for the automakers. Barrington’s auto ad sector was up 11.5%, fueled by a 17.2% increase in advertising by local dealers.
COO Chris Cornelius also bragged about the company’s daily deals product, now live in nine of its markets. He said it is quite competitive with Groupon and Living Social because it uses targeted TV promotion. CEO Jim Yager later chimed in that newspapers aren’t able to do that sort of promotion to drive interest in their daily deals products.
RBR-TVBR observation: Our best line of the day award goes to Barrington CFO Warren Spector (pictured). He was asked whether retrans negotiations are any easier this round, since the cable companies have been paying for a while. Spector noted that the recent public battle between Fox and its affiliates made the MSOs aware of the figures being sought. “So they’re not surprised, but they still don’t want to pay it.”
