Cablevision: Ad Sales Fuel Big Gains

James Dolan

If the broadcasters are doing well in this sudden resurgence, pure-play cable companies seem to be doing better. Cablevision System Corp. tripled its net income in the first quarter to $74.2 million from $21.0 million in the first quarter of 2009. Revenues inched up 5.2% to $1.75 billion from $1.67 billion in the comparable 2009 period.

James L. Dolan, president/CEO of Cablevision Systems, stated: "Cablevision had a strong start to 2010. Subscriber increases across all of our consumer services, including basic video, fueled our growth in cable, and continued our industry-leading penetration rates for yet another quarter."

Among its cable systems, the company said it witnessed big 35.1% growth in advertising sales. Among its programming divisions, Rainbow -- which includes AMC, We tv and IFC -- advertising sales grew 11.6% during the period.

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Overall, Cablevision gained almost 97,900 or 1% in new overall customers -- cable, Internet, and voice -- in the period over December 2009, and 311,400 customers over a year ago: a 3% growth rate.

Digital video customers continued to climb 58,500 -- or 2.1% from a year ago -- while its basic video consumers continued to drop, down 1.2% or 37,900.

High-speed Internet data consumers grew 5% from a year ago or 125,400; phone/voice consumers moved up a bit more, 8% or 165,000.

The growth in revenue per consumer was up, now at $146.15 per month -- a rise of 1.5% from the fourth quarter of 2009 and 7% higher than the first quarter of a year ago.

Rainbow's net revenues improved 6.3% to $265.1 million, with operating income gaining 21.3% to $43.6 million. Rainbow had an 8.1% hike in affiliate revenue compared to the prior year period. Viewing increases were 2.2% at WE tv, 2.0% at IFC and 1.8% at AMC, all compared to March 2009.

Newsday's first-quarter 2010 net revenues dropped again -- 10.4% to $74.7 million. But its operating loss improved to a loss of $4.7 million, compared to a $7.2 million loss in the first quarter of 2009.

 

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