Viacom announced its quarterly results for the three month period ending September 30th. The division which includes Paramount Parks ("Entertainment"-- which also includes Paramount Studios, Simon & Schuster, the theater chain, and music publishing) posted the following:

--A 3% increase in revenue (to $1.10B), which was attributed to revenue increases at the parks, theaters, and publishing that offset decreases in feature film revenues.

--A 24% decrease in operating income (profit) to $112 million that they attributed to higher advertising costs for feature films.

Since Viacom doesn't separate out Paramount Parks in their public reporting of results (like Disney does their parks/resorts), there's no easy way (that I can think of anyway) to know how much the parks made. However, I think it's good that the parks were mentioned as part of the increase in revenue growth.

Complete financial results for the whole company are available on the Viacom web site.

Joel

That`s nice to know that the parks are contributing to Viacom`s bottom line. Now if only Viacom could pump a little extra money into the parks to help boost the revenue even more, I would be a happy camper (B&M at PKI in 2005?) LOL! Seriously, its good to know that Viacom still considers them a significant source of income.

Paramount Parks are one of the leading source of income for Viacom.. its near impossible for them to forget about the revenue brought in every year. Next to Blockbuster and Paramount Studios, it has to be in the top 3 for income.

While profitable (I assume), the parks don't contribute as much to Viacom's bottom line as we'd all like to think. The whole "Entertainment" division contributed 16.6% of Viacom's overall revenue for the quarter. Only a portion of that is actually Paramount Parks, since the division also includes Paramount Studios, the chain of movie theaters, and all publishing activities. Even if all of these businesses contributed equally (which probably isn't the case) the parks would make up about 4% of overall revenue.

What's kind of interesting (well, if you like these geeky business things <g>), is that Disney & Viacom reported very similar revenue numbers for Q3 (Viacom--$6.6B; Disney--$6.2B), but Disney's "Resorts & Attractions" division contributed 27% to their revenue for the quarter. (And, that's a 5% decrease from the year before.)

Of course, there's lots of intangible benefits that the parks bring to Viacom. It's a great PR tool to have people's pleasant vacation memories associated with your media properties. It's also a great forum to cross promote the company's other activities.

Joel

A 24% decrease in operating income (profit) to $112 million is not a good thing. I wouldn't want to be the one to ask Sumner Redstone for 30 million to put in a new coaster.