• by Wayne Friedman , August 7, 2012

Without the business revenues from AMC Networks, Cablevision Systems Corp. second-quarter net income sank 28%.

Cablevision Systems posted a profit of $63.5 million down from $87.5 million. Revenue was up 0.5% to $1.7 billion. A year ago, Cablevision spun off the AMC Networks cable group.

Executives say lower results were also due to new spending -- which expanded its WiFi network, adding content to its on-the-go and HD video offerings, as well as efforts to its Optimum services.

Looking at local advertising revenue, Cablevision grew 23% to $43 million from $35 million in the first quarter and 8.3% from $40 million in the second quarter of 2011.

Cablevision lost 26,000 video business subscribers at the end of the second quarter of 2012 versus where it was at the second quarter of 2011. Cablevision subscribers were at 3.25 million in the most recent second-quarter period, versus second-quarter 2011's video subscribers which were at 3.28 million.

Industrywide, cable companies -- as well as some satellite companies -- have been facing a slowdown in their video businesses. For the first time in its history, DirecTV recently had a net loss of subscribers.

Cablevision's phone and data business is still growing -- 104,000 high-speed data customers from a year earlier, while adding 118,000 voice subscribers.

Among cable operators Charter Communications was not so fortunate regarding its video business consumers -- losing 66,000 subscribers in its second quarter. A year ago for the same time period, it lost 79,000.

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