• by Wayne Friedman , David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, November 3, 2010

The Sinclair station group expects to post higher political ad dollars this year than it did in 2008, even with the past presidential campaign, marking a company record. An estimated $42 million this year would be up about 2% over the haul two years ago.

Outside candidate dollars, in the recent July-September quarter, experienced an uptick in local (10%) and national (14%) net broadcast revenues over last year. A 44% leap in auto dollars was a contributor. The local figure also includes retransmission consent dollars.

Other strong advertising businesses included media, furniture, schools, medical, and telecommunications. But paid-programming, religious, retail, and fast-food ad spending were down.

Third-quarter net broadcast revenues from continuing operations was $158.8 million, up from last year's $136.4 million. However, income from continuing operations in the quarter was down 10% to $14.2 million.

Helping to drive political dollars are the location of Sinclair-operated stations in markets such as Las Vegas, where it has a MyNetworkTV-CW duopoly, and Sen. Harry Reid spent heavily. It also has Florida stations in Tampa and Tallahassee, where there were multiple heavy-spending races, and a Fox-MyNetworkTV duopoly in Pittsburgh.

Looking ahead, David Smith, president and CEO, stated that financial and ad conditions look solid for 2011, a non-political, non-Olympic sales year.

"Early indications are that the core business will be stronger than normal non-political years driven by the Super Bowl on the Fox network, of which we have 20 affiliates, and the continued economic recovery. We believe that the core business in 2011 will grow versus 2010."

Sinclair expects fourth-quarter station net broadcast revenues to grow anywhere from 18% to 20.6% -- landing in the range of $181.5 million to $185.5 million, an increase of 18.0 to 20.6% percent versus the fourth quarter 2009.

Sinclair owns 58 television stations in 35 markets, reaching approximately 22% of U.S. television homes.

At Nexstar Broadcasting, gross non-political revenues -- local and national combined -- were up 12% to $57 million in the quarter. Political dollars of about $7 million helped drive up net revenue by 21%.

"Core local and national revenue increased for the fourth consecutive quarter based on the broad-based advertising recovery and Nexstar's consistent success in building new-to-television local direct billings," said Perry Sook, Nexstar CEO. "Local advertising, our largest revenue source, grew at a higher rate in the third quarter than in the second quarter or the first half of 2010, despite tougher prior year comps."

Income from operations was $13 million after a loss in the July-September quarter last year.

Nexstar-operated stations benefiting from political spending include the NBC and CBS stations in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Pa. area, several in Florida and multiple outlets in Illinois.