quarterly reports

Local revenue is up 12% to $69.8 million and interactive soars 54% to $8.4 million.

The company’s five full-power and four low-power stations account for $5 million, down from $5.1 million in the last quarter of 2010.

The gain is led by a 12% increase in product sales and a 2% rise in service revenue. The company’s operating loss improved by 31%.

Increases in local, national and retrans money push non-political revenue to $67.3 million.

The gains were powered by double-digit gains in retrans revenue, auto and professional services spending and developing media revenue.

A difference of nearly $19 million in political ad revenue from the year-ago quarter is the culprit.

A 14% rise in local and a 30% boost in retransmission consent revenue were the quarter’s drivers.

While lower political ad revenue dragged down total fourth quarter revenue, the broadcaster reported 3% gains in local and national sales as well as retrans revenue and 49% higher Internet ad money.

The rebound is driven by a double-digit rise in automotive advertising.

DirecTV grew healthy U.S. revenues — but with a smaller number of new subscribers — during the fourth quarter of 2011. U.S. revenue climbed 9% to $6.03 billion, with net consumer additions of 125,000. This was against a net gain of 289,000 for the fourth quarter of 2010. For the year, DirecTV ended with a 3% gain to 19.89 million U.S. subscribers.

The company says the decrease is “entirely attributable to lower political advertising sales as well as lost revenues resulting from the NBA lockout during 2011.”

The company says the dip is due to soft ratings at the NBC network, lower political ad revenue at the owned stations and a quarter that was four days shorter than the previous year’s.

The streaming video and DVD rental service saw net income fall 14% in the fourth quarter due to a $9 million settlement in a case claiming Netflix had violated a consumer-privacy law.

That includes both the Fox network and TV stations. The gains were driven by network ad revenue and a greater than 100% increase in retransmission consent revenues.

Excluding political, local revenue rose 13.3%, while national dropped 7.4%. Automotive, grocery and medical were the leading ad categories.

The decrease is attributed to lower political advertising revenues at its O&Os and higher marketing costs, partially offset by lower programming and production costs due to the absence of the Oprah Winfrey Show at the owned stations.

The broadcaster was aided by a strong automotive category along with double-digit gains in combined retrans and Internet revenue.