• by Wayne Friedman , November 1, 2007

Sinclair Broadcast Group reported a 44% drop of net income--with lower advertising results from its TV stations.

The TV station group's overall national advertising revenues were down 13.2%--mostly due to lower political ad sales, which sunk to $1.1 million from $7.7 million from the period before. Sinclair's net income was $9.9 million, versus $22.6 million in the previous year.

Advertising spending by the automotive, fast-food, paid programming and movies categories were down, while media, medical, services and home products advertising spending was higher. Sinclair also blamed lower results on the weakness of MyNetworkTV stations.

Sinclair now says that excluding political revenues, local advertising sales represents 65.7% of all its advertising sales activity. That helped the TV group's financial revenue stability in the quarter because its local advertising revenues in 3Q were at the same level versus a year ago.

Sinclair says among its network affiliates groups, CBS stations were doing the best--up 9.3%--with its Fox affiliates 1.8% higher. On the negative end of things: CW stations were off 1.4%, then MyNetworkTV at 12.3% lower. ABC stations dropped 12.9% and NBC, at the bottom, 22.2% lower.

But without political revenues, business was less volatile. ABC stations were down 0.9%, CW stations declined 0.8%, and MyNetworkTV dropped 11.5%.