Today’s PEJ “State of the News Media” report also pulls together some interesting estimates on the revenues and profits made by the major news organizations last year.
According to the report, CBS News revenue was $400 million in 2009, down from $500 million in 2008. And the network “is not operating in the black.” ABC News “could claim to generate a small operating profit in 2009,” but was also down in estimated revenue from $700 million in 2008 to $600 million in 2009.
NBC was also down from 2008, but PEJ estimates NBC News’ 2009 broadcast revenue to be $800 million, thanks in part to the success of “Today” and “Nightly News.” But the bulk of NBC News’ total revenue comes from cable networks CNBC, MSNBC, and the Weather Channel. CNBC alone brings in over $600 million. Overall, NBC News revenue would be around $1.8 billion, according to PEJ.
Among cable news networks, which have the benefit of both ad and subscriber dollars, the report points out, “For the first time, Fox News was clearly on top.” From PEJ:
Financially, CNN and HLN remained static, not necessarily a bad thing given the challenges facing other media in 2009. Profits (up 1% to $475.5 million) and revenues (down 1% to $1.18 billion) were basically flat, as was overall news investment (down 2.5% to $703.4 million).
By contrast, Fox achieved growth across nearly all key metrics. Its audiences were up by nearly a quarter in both prime time (2.13 million viewers) and daytime (1.2 million viewers). Its profits (up 19% to $534.8 million) and revenues (up 14% to $1.21 billion) grew substantially. The channel’s news investment was up 10% to $674 million.
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As for MSNBC, the median audience for its prime-time programming, now filled with liberal talk shows, rose 3% to 786,000 for the year. Its daytime audience, when it relies more on news from NBC, fell 8% to 325,000. Financially, the mixed audience results helped keep things flat. Profits rose 1% to $149.6 million, on revenues that were similar, up less than 1% to $368 million. As a consequence, MSNBC is expected to have spent roughly the same amount, $217.9 million, on newsgathering in 2009 as a year earlier.