• by Wayne Friedman , November 1, 2017

Hurricane issues affected Sinclair Broadcast Group in its third-quarter reporting period, especially in Florida and Texas.

The biggest U.S. TV station group’s revenues were down 3.3% to $670.9 million, which were under analysts' expectations. Net income sunk 37% to $32.6 million. Sinclair’s media revenues, which include advertising, were down 1.7% to $624.2 million.

Political advertising, anticipated to be down versus the big election period last year, stood at $7.3 million for the current third quarter versus $45 million in 2016.

Mid-day Wednesday trading of Sinclair stock was down 5.4% to $30.

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma cost companies around $20 billion in lost business, according to Gus Faucher, chief U.S. economist at PNC. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, put losses as high as $22.5 billion in the U.S.

In the current fourth quarter, Sinclair expects its media revenues to fall from 6.1% to 5.8%. That's $684.3 million dropping to $682.3 million, due to the absence of political advertising. It expects $10 million in political revenue versus $113.2 million a year ago.

Barton Crockett, media analyst for FBR & Co., says of this projected decline: “Driving this is a mid-single-digit increase in core advertising revenues, consistent with our estimate of 6%.”

Digital advertising grew 55% over the third quarter a year ago.

Last month, Sinclair shareholders approved its Tribune Media merger. Sinclair still waits for FCC approval of that deal.

In August, Sinclair made an agreement with YouTube TV -- the digital pay TV service of live, linear TV networks and programming -- for all its affiliates stations, ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. It also expanded its YouTube TV deal for its CW affiliates.

In October, it made a similar deal with Sony Playstation Vue for its ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox affiliates.