• by Wayne Friedman , November 20, 2006

Media company Belo Corp. continued to get a big bump from political advertising dollars--$20.7 million--to beef up October revenues. Consolidated revenue for the month increased 9.8% versus last year.

Political advertising revenue helped contribute to a 27% gain to almost $83 million in its TV group revenues, versus October 2005. Overall, ad revenue bolted up 29% over a year ago.

But TV national spot, which represents about half of a typical station's revenues and includes little political revenues, only grew 3.3% in October versus the prior year. And despite the bump from political advertising, local spot still suffered, down 5.5% in October 2006.

The good news for one of the country's largest media companies: another major piece of growth at Belo was its Internet businesses. Advertising revenues were up 56% in October 2006, versus the year before.

However, on the flip side, Belo's newspaper advertising revenue slid 6.6 percent.