While CBS Corporation boasted revenues of $3.37 billion for the third quarter, the company’s local TV stations reported a 6% drop in revenue for the period compared to last year.
CBS is attributing the decrease in station revenue to a lack of political advertising during the quarter, compared to Q3 2010.
Excluding political advertising, revenue was up slightly for the quarter as CBS stations saw increases in retrans revenue as well as improvement in key advertising categories such as financial services and domestic auto.
“We continue to see a stable marketplace,” CBS CFO Joseph Ianniello said, “and based on current pacing date, we expect to see non-political TV station revenue to be up low single digits, with the CBS TV stations doing even better than that.”