Friday, July 17, 2009
Happy Days Aren’t Here Again: Another Miserable Quarter for NBC
Yesterday, Google told Wall Street that its business had “stabilized” during the spring, but it may be one of the only media companies that gets to say that.
GE’s NBC Universal, for instance, just posted second-quarter results that were as bad as its first quarter. Jeff Zucker’s TV and movie unit said revenue was down eight percent, and profit down 41 percent for the three months ending June 30; in the previous quarter, revenue was only down two percent, while profit was down 43 percent.
One big reason why very few ad dollars have yet to make their way from television to the Web, even though online video is booming: TV viewing isn’t shrinking. Yet. Nielsen says more Americans are watching TV than ever before–up 1.2 percent in the last quarter–and they’re spending more time watching TV, too–that’s up 1.9 percent, to a staggering 153-plus hours per month.
