Media company Q4 results: Suddenlink sales rose 7.1 percent to $524.6 million from...

Media company Q4 results: Suddenlink sales rose 7.1 percent to $524.6 million from the year-ago period as the cable operator added broadband, phone and digital video customers and raised video rates. The company lost 19,100 basic video subscribers during the quarter, with 1.21 million total on Dec. 31. “Bundling and promotional discounts and digital customers purchasing fewer digital tiers of service during the trailing twelve months” also hurt results, privately held Suddenlink said in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/VLDLxN). “Revenues for our commercial business grew due to increases in the number of commercial high-speed data and telephone customers and from increases in cell tower and backhaul revenues from carrier customers.” Income from operations fell 29 percent to $57.4 million. ... Nexstar sales rose 35 percent to $116.2 million from the year-earlier period as political ad revenue surged by well over 1,000 percent to $27.3 million during the runup to November’s elections. The political ad sales were “record-breaking,” said Chairman Perry Sook, in a Thursday news release (http://bit.ly/15AmXvB). It said retransmission fee revenue rose 56 percent to $16.1 million. “The big retrans year will be 2014,” analyst Marci Ryvicker of Wells Fargo wrote investors following the company’s earnings call. “Management expects the JSA situation to remain ’status quo,'” she wrote of a draft FCC order, now on hold, that would attribute TV joint services agreements to the station brokering more than 15 percent of another in-market station’s ads (CD Feb 27 p1). Nexstar Q4 income from operations doubled to $35.4 million from the year-ago quarter. The stock closed up 4.5 percent at $16.91 on Thursday ... Journal Communications Q4 sales rose 31 percent to $124.5 million from Q4 2011. Chairman Steven Smith cited “record political spending,” in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/W8BR9x). TV revenue rose 76 percent to $55.8 million. Retrans revenue rose by a quarter to $3 million. This quarter excluding political sales, broadcast revenue will rise by a percentage in the mid-single digits from the year-ago period, the company forecast. Last quarter’s operating earnings rose 92 percent to $27.2 million. Journal Communications shares closed up 9 percent at $6.27 on Thursday.