“A rebound in most TV advertising categories, accentuated by an exceptionally strong political advertising season, resulted in a strong end of the year for the company,” Scripps president and CEO Rich Boehne said in announcing the company’s fourth quarter financial results.
Scripps, which owns 10 stations across the country, saw a 37% increase in revenue for its TV stations during the fourth quarter. The boost in political advertising surrounding last year’s elections drove the stations to $101 million in revenue–8.1% higher than the $93.4 million brought in during the fourth quarter of 2008, the year of the presidential election.
Overall, Scripps stations collected $43.3 million in local advertising for the fourth quarter and $23.4 million in national ads. $28.1 million came in from political advertising.
“Our primary focus… is on using this difficult economic period to retool the company for sustainable cash flow growth in the future,” Boehne said. “In the TV division, we have retrained nearly the entire news division to deliver more and better news content to larger and more valuable audiences on all screens.”