Broadcast TV Nets Gain 4% In Q4 TV Ad Revs

TV networks had a solid advertising fall -- all due to big upfront advertising deals made in the summer.

MediaPost reports five broadcast networks were a collective 4% higher in national TV advertising, pulling in $7.06 billion. That's ooking at all dayparts from September 19 through December 22, according to estimates from iSpot.tv. It was $6.79 billion for the same time period a year ago.

NBC pulled in $2.01 billion, up 9% from the $1.843 billion over the same time period a year ago. The network five games from big TV series “Thursday Night Football.”

CBS was next at $1.99 billion, virtually even to the $2.01 billion a year ago. CBS gave up a few “Thursday Night Football” games -- now sharing the series with NBC.

ABC was 14% higher at $1.29 billion versus $1.13 billion. Fox slipped 2.5% to $1.57 billion versus $1.61 billion. The CW rose 10% to $204.5 million from $186.5 million.

Three broadcast networks -- NBC, CBS, and Fox -- pulled in around 40% of its total national TV advertising revenues from NFL programming. The first half of the NFL season witnessed some viewership declines -- now recovering slowly.

Looking at some big cable TV networks, ESPN was virtually flat

$866.2 million against $867.9 million; TNT was at $474.4 million against $402.2 million; USA Network, $330.4 million versus $196.8 million

TV news channels did well, given the strong political TV advertising season: Fox News Channel virtually tripled its results from a year ago --  $315.5 million against $91.8 million. CNN also did well -- $220.9 million versus $81.5 million; MSNBC was at $59.5 million against $34.2 million.