CBS Earnings More Than Double In Second Quarter

LOS ANGELES (CBS/AP) — CBS Corp. Tuesday t announced that its net income more than doubled in the second quarter, helped by new deals with online distributors such as Netflix and a small increase in advertising revenue.

Net income came to $395 million, or 58 cents per share, compared with $150 million, or 22 cents per share, a year ago.

Revenue grew 8 percent to $3.59 billion.

The results beat the forecast of analysts polled by FactSet, who were looking for earnings of 45 cents per share on revenue of $3.55 billion.

Advertising revenue rose 3 percent from last year, despite being compared with higher political advertising and higher revenue for the NCAA college basketball tournament a year ago. This year, CBS shared coverage of the tournament with Time Warner Inc.'s Turner. That reduced revenue, but it also lowered costs and improved profits. The April 4 championship game fell during the second quarter.

The broadcaster also benefited from growing appetite for online video. In February, CBS struck a two-year deal to allow online video company Netflix Inc. to stream older CBS shows such as "Medium," "Frasier," and "Cheers" to its subscribers. CBS struck a similar deal with Amazon.com Inc. last month. CBS said content licensing and distribution revenue grew by 21 percent.

Meantime, CBS averaged 6 million viewers for its primetime programming between July 25, and Sunday, according to live-plus-same-day figures released Tuesday by The Nielsen Co.

It again received a boost from "Big Brother," with all three of its episodes winning their time slots and finishing among the week's 10 most-watched programs. The Sunday episode was the most watched, averaging 8.17 million viewers to finish fifth for the week.

Shares of New York-based CBS rose 22 cents to $26.50 in after-hours trading following the release of results Tuesday. Earlier, they closed the regular session down $1, or 3.7 percent, at $26.28.

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