• by Wayne Friedman , August 18, 2009

After a continuing rough 2009, TV station revenue is estimated to climb 5.2% to $18.5 billion, according to media researcher SNL Kagan.

Kagan says 2009 is on track to sink a massive 17% to $17.6 billion -- the most severe drop since the 2001 recession, when TV stations dropped 16.9% to $21.9 billion from $26.3 billion in 2000.

Much of the 2010 recovery will come as a result of a mild advertising market uptick -- but other revenue will also contribute, such as retransmission fees that TV stations get from cable operators. Retransmission revenues will grow from $500.1 million in 2008 to $738.7 million in 2009, and will cross the billion-dollar threshold by 2011.

Kagan notes that since 2005, the TV station revenues have seen declining periods in overall TV revenue in four of the last five years: 2005 was down 6.8%, 2007 was off 8.9%, 2008 sank 2.5%, and 2009 is estimated to be down 17%.

Only 2006 showed a gain of 7.9%, due to trends in historical spending increases that typically occurred every other year from political advertising and Olympic year ad sales.

Network compensation -- money that networks give stations to run their programming -- continues to drop, and is projected to be $81.6 million in 2009 and $48.2 million next year. These revenues have steadily declined throughout the entire decade from a high of $493 million in 2000.

Both national spot advertising and local spot advertising will continue to move with similar results -- national spot down 18% in 2009 to $7.4 billion and local spot down 16% to 10.0 billion. In 2010, national spot is expected to grow 6% to $7.9 billion and local spot will climb 5.0% to $10.5 billion.