Viacom’s cable properties benefitted from the advertising recovery of the past year, but lower DVD sales erased any of its gains in the last quarter. The poor earnings performance comes a day after its MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) unit held its “pre-Upfront” programming presentation in New York City, highlighting its returning hits Teen Mom and The Jersey Shore, and announced that Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report would be returning to Hulu after a year-long absence.
Revenue at the Media Networks segment, which houses the cable channels, was up 6 percent. The growth was fueled by a 10 percent jump in U.S. ad dollars, a trend that had been continuing for the past year.
But that was not enough to compensate for a 16 percent drop in film revenue, as home entertainment revenue plunged 44 percent and TV license fees slid 38 percent — both numbers strikingly similar to the company’s performance in Q3. (Viacom reports along a fiscal year calendar, and counts much of Q4 as its “FYQ1″).
In contrast, Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), which reported its Q4 results yesterday, turned in strong performance for the filmed division, with revenues rising 10 percent. DVD sales, however, dipped 3 percent.
A Viacom rep noted that the film segment wasn’t a total washout. Box office revenues were up 347 percent Also, the company had only three DVD releases in the quarter vs. 6 in the ’09 period, including three major hits Transformers, Star Trek, GI Joe, that made for a difficult comparison.

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