Scripps Networks Interactive said it is seeing a late second-quarter wave of demand for advertising inventory in the scatter market.
During the company’s first quarter earnings call Thursday, Scripps Networks CFO Lori Hickok, said that after 5% ad revenue growth in the quarter, pricing in the scatter market “tempered” compared to last year’s strong market.
But she said that more recently, the company has seen a “strong second wave” of demand. “This wave of demand should drive prices higher,” she said.
Scripps is also seeing demand for its digital advertising inventory, she added.
On Wednesday, during Time Warner’s earnings call, Turner CEO John Martin described a similar phenomenon where second-quarter volume appeared to slow with clients taking a wait-and-see approach as the upfronts approach but a more recent pickup in demand.
With both Comcast’s NBCUnversal unit and Turner reporting lower domestic ad revenue in the first quarter and some signs of weakness in second-quarter scatter, TV stocks fell sharply on Wednesday.
TV stocks were mixed in late morning trading on Thursday.
(Photo via 401(K) 2012's Flickr. Image taken on Feb. 21, 2017 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 9x16 aspect ratio.)
