• by Wayne Friedman , February 23, 2010

Like other TV groups, E.W. Scripps' television station group is seeing sudden big increases from its all-important auto advertising clients.

After laboring for more than a year in a crushing recessionary economy, Scripps executives, in its earnings call, said pacing for automotive advertising is rocketing up 40% to 50% in the first quarter of 2010.

One caveat: this comes against much-depressed first-quarter 2009 levels.

Scripps said optimism started in December, when there was a gain of 12% in year-over-year automotive business. Automotive TV advertising is the biggest category for TV stations, typically representing 20% to 30% of its overall annual ad revenues.

Overall, the TV group says advertising sales in December were up 11% in the month versus prior year comparisons.

But Scripps' overall fourth-quarter results still show some struggles: TV station group revenue was 20.8% down to $73.9 million versus 2008. Taking out political advertising ($2.9 million in 2009; $26 million in 2008), it was up 5.4% in the quarter.

Local advertising was 2.9% higher in the fourth quarter to $42.7 million, with national spot advertising 7.2% improved to $22.2 million.

Concerning Scripps' newspaper group, revenue was down 15% to $117 million, with advertising revenues off 20% to $83.4 million. Local was down 24% to $25.7 million; classified dropped 26% to $21.1 million; national ads also were 26% lower to $5.6 million; and online advertising slipped 5% to $7.5 million.

Scripps says the decline in online advertising comes from weakness in print advertising, which is tied to online classified advertising, and represents about half of online ad revenues. But looking at online alone, sales rose 21% to $4.4 million.

For the company as a whole, Scripps had a net income of $12.2 million for the period, versus a $12.7 million loss in 2008. Revenues sank 18% to $217.4 million from $264.9 million.