The television stations in the Washington Post portfolio enjoyed a healthy Q2, but it wasn’t enough to spare the company an overall decline in revenues based on barely-better-than-flat cable results and losses at its newspapers and education businesses.
Overall revenue dropped 5% to $1.007B, and operating income was down from $82.1M to $60.4M.
* Education suffered a 9% revenue loss to $558.4M and operating income declined from $21.5M all the way down to $3.4M.
* Cable improved 2% to $195.6M, based on increased internet and phone service subscribers balanced by a decrease in basic cable subscribers.
* Newspaper revenues dropped 7% to $151.8M, with print advertising shrinking by a factor of 15% to $56.7M.
* Broadcast television was the bright spot, but unfortunately it is the smallest of the four groups. Nevertheless, revenue was up 13% to $95.6M and operating income was up 34% to $43.7M. A $4.4M surge in political advertising was a big contributor to the gain.
