NAB left election year financial data out of a report to the FCC ...

defended its TV Financial Report against attacks by Consumers Union and Prometheus Radio Project. The report shows broadcasting to be so much less profitable for lower-rated stations in smaller markets that some suffer “negative profitability,” NAB said. Prometheus and Consumers Union criticized the report’s lack of even-year financial data as skewing the analysis and misrepresenting the state of the industry by ignoring revenue from political and Olympics-related ad sales. NAB disagreed. Campaign spending on TV ads wavers significantly year-to-year for reasons such as how contested a congressional seat is and whether a station broadcasts in a presidential battleground state, NAB said. “Thus, while the mere fact that elections and the Summer Olympics may occur in even-numbered years is not ‘random,’ the actual benefit that a given station earns in any particular year is dependent on external unpredictable factors,” NAB said. “Including the years in which these events occur in a financial analysis that includes a large number of stations would distort the ‘average’ revenues of stations within a given market range.” That would paint a rosier picture for some stations that would have “not relations to reality,” NAB said. The trade group also defended a previous decision to omit from its financial analysis 1999 financial data ultimately included in an update. “As can be seen by the revised study, the inclusion of 1999 makes no significant difference in the analysis,” NAB said.