• by Wayne Friedman , January 24, 2018

TV news was the only programming category to witness advertising gains in 2017.

Standard Media Index says across all TV platforms, TV news climbed 4.1%, with entertainment programming virtually flat at 0.8% and sports down 12%. Without Olympics comparisons to a year ago, sports was at 1.3% versus 2016.

SMI says MSNBC grew the most -- up 17.8% -- of all the news channels.

CNN was up 13.6%, while Fox News Channel added 11.2%. The big three cable networks had advertising growth in 10 out of the 12 months of 2017.

Looking at the individual advertising networks with the largest gains, SMI says CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and ESPN were the top five networks in 2017, bringing 42.4% of the national television ad dollars.

CBS declined 4.2% for the year -- mostly due to losses from comparisons to 2016, when it had the Super Bowl. Fox, which had the Super Bowl in 2017, grew 14.2%. ABC dropped 2.3%, and NBC declined 15.5% -- virtually all as a result of unfavorable comparisons to 2016, when it had the Summer Olympics. NBC would have been up 4% for the year.

Overall, cable TV networks dropped 2.4% in advertising revenue for 2017; with broadcast TV networks sinking 3.9%. Leaving out the comparisons to the Olympics in 2017, national TV market would only have declined 1%.

SMI derives these total industry estimates from actual spending by ad agencies representing about 70% of all U.S. agency spend.