Comcast Shows It's Beautiful to Have Multiple Revenue Streams

(MoneyWatch)  Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator, reported earnings this morning, and in so doing, made the increasingly strong case for all media to be a multiple revenue-stream business.

The company's new cable subscriptions are slowing, but hardly falling off a cliff: it lost 233,000 basic cable subscribers, while gaining 247,000 digital subs. The increase in digital subs was a big drop-off from the 530,000 Comcast gained in the fourth quarter the year before, but overall, the company reported revenue growth of 11 percent for the year and 9 percent for the quarter. That's pretty impressive when one considers what a disaster the fourth quarter was for so many companies. Consumers may be pulling their hair out over the recession, but apparently they aren't running to pull out their coaxial cables. Better to be bald and still have access to TV Land.

Though Comcast, like every other business, is bracing itself for bad times to come, the one truly dark cloud crowd I could see on the horizon lay in ad revenue. If you burrow down to slide 6 of the Powerpoint that accompanied this morning's earnings call, you'll see a note that ad revenue declined by five percent, but, strikingly, that it would have declined by 20 percent had it not been for it being an election year.

But, no matter. Comcast is actually increasing its dividend by eight percent to 27 cents a share, which it can afford to since it gets money not just from advertisers, but from phone customers, business customers and the cable networks it owns. Nice business to be in. Maybe The New York Times Co. should consider selling phone service, and charging for its Web site.