• by Wayne Friedman , April 16, 2010

Boosted by strong Olympic advertising sales, Gannett Co.'s television operations took in nearly 17% more revenue, resulting in a 55.2% gain in operating income.

Television revenues rose $161.3 million compared with $139.8 million, with $18.6 million coming from advertising sales due to the NBC Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Advertising results stayed strong after that. In March, after the Olympics ended, Gannett says several advertising categories witnessed double-digit growth, including automotive, retail and packaged goods.

The news would seem to get better for the rest of the year. Gannett says based on current trends, it expects the percentage increase in TV advertising revenues to be in the very high teens to the low twenties for the second quarter of 2010, compared to the second quarter of 2009.

But the company's print operations -- its newspapers -- continue to suffer. Publishing revenues in the first quarter were $1.0 billion, 7.1% lower than the $1.1 billion for the first quarter of 2009. Advertising revenues in the first quarter dipped 7.9% to $665.9 million, compared to $722.8 million for the first quarter last year.

But the company says newspaper advertising is trending up versus the fourth-quarter period.

Gannett says total advertising was 10.4 percentage points better than fourth quarter in year-over-year comparisons. Classified advertising was 14.0% points better than the fourth-quarter period, while comparisons for retail and national were 9.3 percentage points and 7.9 percentage points better, respectively.