Movie Unit Sinks Viacom (VIA)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 28, 2:14AM EDT · Published Jul 28, 7:16AM EDT

Viacom (VIA) had a bad quarter, which was to be expected. Media companies are suffering from drops in advertising revenue and the number of consumers who subscribe to their content services and go to their movies.

Viacom’s film entertainment business scuttled earnings. Revenue for the entire company fell 14% to $3.3 billion. Operating income was off 26% to $586 million.

Viacom’s film entertainment division actually lost money. Revenue in the business dropped 22% to $1.38 billion. The company’s other large unit, Media Networks, did less poorly with revenue down 8% to just under $2 billion. The operating profit numbers were even worse for the film business. It made $86 million in the quarter a year ago. In the most recent period it lost $25 million. Media Networks operating profit fell 12% to $671 million.

The movie business is cyclical, driven to a large extent by blockbuster pictures. If Viacom does not produce on soon, the year is not likely to get better for the big media company.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

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A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.