• by Wayne Friedman , January 28, 2014

Comcast’s NBCUniversal tallied strong ad revenue in the fourth quarter of 2013, due to strong viewership of its broadcast TV shows. Specifically, NBCU’s broadcast TV revenues were up 11.5% to $2.2 billion. The division also benefited from higher content licensing.

Couple this with higher retrans dollars and NBCUniversal’s revenue was 7.5% higher, to $6.5 billion during the period.

For the year 2013, NBCU’s revenue remained virtually the same at $23.7 billion -- slipping 0.7%, with its strong operating cash flow, up 15.2% to $4.7 billion.

Cable networks added 5.3% to $2.3 billion during the period. NBCUniversal’s theatrical film unit grew 4.9% to $1.4 billion, and theme parks climbed 8.8% to $566 million.

Comcast benefited in other video areas: For the first time in 26 earning periods, the number of video subscribers gained over the previous period -- growing 43,000 in the fourth quarter versus a 7,000 loss in the fourth-quarter 2012 period.

For the year end, Comcast sits at 21.7 million video customers.

Looking across all of its businesses, Comcast added a net 1.8 million customers -- video, broadband and phone -- putting it at a combined 53 million customers.

Comcast companywide revenues grew 6.2% to $15.9 billion for the fourth quarter. And for the full year 2013, it was up 8.3% to $21.5 billion, when excluding revenue gains from the 2012 London Olympics and pension costs.

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