• by Wayne Friedman , August 5, 2009

Second-quarter advertising sales are typically the biggest for any TV business -- not so this year. In keeping with this latest trend, Sinclair Broadcast Group's advertising sales were $109.8 million in the second quarter -- $1 million lower than its first-quarter reporting period.

However, David Smith, president/CEO of Sinclair, in a release for its company's financial results, said the big TV station group outperformed the industry's performance.

Sinclair's broadcast revenues from continuing operations were $133 million for the period, a big 18.8% decline from the year before. The company's operating income also fell to $25.8 million from $43.3 million in the prior-year period.

Overall, Sinclair narrowed its net losses to $2.8 million from a net loss of 11.8 million in the similar 2008 period.

Local advertising revenues were down 21% -- with advertising revenues from national spot sales efforts drifting even lower, down 31.4%. Contributing to this was political advertising, down to $0.7 million in the second quarter from $3.6 million in second-quarter 2008 -- part of the big election-year marketing efforts.

Sinclair says its hardest-hit results were from its CW affiliates, which dropped 27.9% in ad sales. The best-of-the-worst results were from its MyNetworkTV stations, at an 18.7% drop. Fox was down 23.9%; ABC, 27.1%; CBS, 23.9%, and NBC 20.7%.

Sinclair's big automotive advertising category continued to be a major factor, down 46.1% in the quarter. Automotive represents 14.7% of Sinclair's time sales. Other categories also contributed, including lower, fast food, home products, retail, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, and paid programming.

Good news came from stations, which retained their average market share of ad dollars available. Sinclair says its stations held their average total market share at approximately 19.0%, as compared to second quarter last year.

Looking forward, Sinclair expects more of the same -- down-trending financial results.

The company expects third-quarter broadcast revenues to drop 15.7% to $126.6 million. In the fourth quarter, Sinclair says broadcast revenues will be in the $135.5 million to $139.7 million range, a 15.0% to 17.6% drop.

For the full year, Sinclair is estimating net broadcast revenues of $526.4 million to $530.6 million, down 17.0% to 17.6%.>?p>