• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, July 17, 2009

Responding to a limp upfront market, the NBC Television Network is expected to take a heightened gamble on the scatter market for the coming season. The network will hold back more inventory than normal, looking for higher prices on a bet the ad market will improve, a top executive at parent General Electric said.

"The upfront is very slow ... we're planning on retaining more inventory," said Keith Sherin, CFO at GE, who did not elaborate on plans.

For many years, NBC would sell more than 80% of its inventory in the pre-season market -- a figure that has fallen in recent years and apparently will again.

Sherin spoke on a conference call Friday to discuss GE's results for the April-June period. The full NBC Universal unit posted a revenue drop of 8% to $3.57 billion.

Profit in the second quarter fell 41% to $539 million. But Sherin said that figure drops to 24% if about $200 million from two special items is stripped out: the sale of Sundance Channel last year (generating $113 million) and a $95 million writedown this year on NBCU's stake in Ion Media, which has filed for bankruptcy.

NBCU's broadcast segment, which includes the network and 10 owned local stations, saw revenues drop 9% to $1.4 billion -- partly due to the stations continuing to be hit by demonstrably lower ad demand.

NBCU's increasingly important cable business, which is less volatile because of long-term deals for affiliate fees, had revenues rise 3% to $1.2 billion. Profit was up notably at MSNBC and CNBC, Sherin said.

Year-over-year comparisons should see growth in the second half of the year, GE CEO Jeff Immelt said. A $150 million loss that NBCU suffered on the Olympics in the 2008 third quarter will not be on the books this year, Sherin noted.

The quarter when an Olympics is held -- such as last year with the Beijing games -- takes a hit, in part, because of high production costs.