• by Wayne Friedman , May 10, 2016

Tribune Media’s core advertising made small gains in its first-quarter reporting period. But, as with other TV station groups, it made bigger revenue leaps with political advertising and retransmission fees.

Core advertising inched up 2.2% to $292 million, with retrans climbing 21% to $83.5 million and political ad revenue totaling $13 million -- up 170% versus the same period a year before.

Digital media businesses were up 6% to $53.3 million, compared from $50.2 million. Tribune’s recent digital media acquisitions including Infostrada Sports, SportsDirect, Covers and Enswers, helped its digital revenues in the period.

Tribune also benefited from higher video revenues in its the core digital business.

The company also took in sharply higher carriage fees from its cable channel WGN America -- up 44% to $31 million.

All that lifted Tribune Media revenues 11% to $454.7 million. But profitability sank -- to $11.1 million from $36.4 million in the first quarter 2015. Tribune Media stock was down 0.4% to $37.59 in mid-day Tuesday trading.

For the full 2016 year, Tribune expects revenues between $2.25 billion and $2.28 billion -- with TV and entertainment getting between $1.975 billion and $2.0 billion and digital media pulling in $225 million and $235 million.

Tribune Media’s Tribune Broadcasting’s owns 42 TV stations reaching about 50 million homes; its national cable network WGN America, reaches 80 million households.