Both radio and TV station groups posted Q2 revenues gains for CBS Corporation. The Entertainment division, including the CBS Television Network, had a strong quarter.
Local Broadcasting revenues for the second quarter of 2011 increased 2% to $691 million from $678 million for the same prior-year period, primarily driven by higher advertising sales, which benefitted in part from an increase in market share, the company said.
CBS Television Stations revenues increased slightly despite a difficult comparison to the second quarter of 2010, which included significant political advertising sales. CBS Television Stations’ performance was led by growth in many key advertising categories, including financial services, media and retail, partially offset by a decline in spending from Japanese auto manufacturers.
CBS Radio revenues increased 4% with growth in retail and financial services, partially offset by a decline in political advertising.
Local Broadcasting OIBDA for the second quarter of 2011 increased 7% to $230 million from $214 million for the same prior-year period, due to the revenue growth and lower programming costs.
Entertainment revenues for the second quarter of 2011 increased 10% to $1.84 billion from $1.67 billion for the same prior-year period, driven by the new licensing agreement for the digital streaming of select library titles, the third-cycle domestic syndication sale of “Frasier,” higher retransmission revenues and growth in Network primetime advertising. The company said these increases were partially offset by the impact of the new programming agreement for the NCAA Tournament, which resulted in lower revenues but higher profits.
Entertainment OIBDA for the second quarter of 2011 increased 97% to $440 million from $223 million for the same prior-year period with an 11 percentage point improvement in the margin to 24%. The strong margin growth reflects increases in higher margin revenues as well as lower sports programming costs resulting from the new programming agreement for the NCAA Tournament.
All in all, CBS Corp. reported that Q2 revenues were up 8% to $3.6 billion and OIBDA rose 51% to $873 million.
That set CEO Les Moonves up for an upbeat quarterly conference call with Wall Street analysts.
