• by Wayne Friedman , May 10, 2021

TV station group Tegna witnessed solid advertising revenue growth, up over 9% in the first quarter -- as well as still-rising advertising business from Premion, its OTT and streaming ad service.

Advertising was 9.4% to $322.8 million in the period.

“Not only have AMS [advertising and marketing services] revenues shown quarterly sequential improvement since the height of the pandemic in the second quarter of 2020, AMS revenues have returned to pre-COVID levels, showing growth above 2019 on pro forma basis,” according to the company’s earnings release.

In addition, Tegna says Premion is on pace to grow 45% to 50% in 2021 over 2020.

Tegna doesn’t break out quarterly results for the service, but said in March, Premion grew 40% to $145 million for the 2020 year.

Last week, Tegna announced new attribution efforts, in term of performance and sales data, for the automotive and tourism marketers campaigns on Premion and Tegna TV stations.

The company says its subscription revenues rose at a stronger clip than its ad business, up 16.2% to $386.7 million. It expects similar hikes for the rest of 2021.

In March, Tegna inked a distribution agreement with Amazon to provide its stations with on-demand news through Amazon’s news app on Fire TV.

Overall company-wide quarterly revenue grew 6% to $727 million. Net income is up 31% to $112.8 million.

Early Monday morning trading of Tegna stock was up 1% to $20.15.