First and foremost, Gannett is a newspaper business, and newspaper is a challenged business. But its television group did quite nicely during Q2.
Gannett President/CEO Gracia Martore, president and chief executive said, “Broadcasting results were positively impacted by significantly higher core and politically related ad demand and retransmission revenue.”
Television revenues increased 11.4% to $205.4M during Q2 2012. Gannett counts results from its Captivate Network in with its broadcasting stations, and a 15.3% growth rate there contributed to the positive television results.
Television was up still up 11.2% not counting Captivate, to $197.7M, with an increase of $9M in political spending, and “significantly higher core advertising revenue led by auto…”
Retransmission was also up, gaining 17.1% to $22.7M, and the TV digital category was up 11.5%.
Gannett provides an adjusted television revenue which takes into account the two-year political cycle, and under that formula it still enjoyed a 6.2% increase in its television results.
Looking ahead, the healthy representation of NBC in the Gannett station portfolio is looking good for Q3 when Olympics revenue will come in along with increasing political spending.
Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker noted that the company’s benevolent exposure to the Olympics, along with it occupancy of prime political real estate which includes four presidential battleground states makes it a less useful barometer of the health of the television industry in general. But these factors will certainly be good for Gannett in particular. Ryvicker went so far as to say that Gannett is in the best position regarding those two factors of all US broadcast television groups.
