The company’s December quarter results, released Thursday, showed that revenue from big content-licensing deals with online-video services helped lift subscription revenue at its TV networks division by 16%. In the U.S., where Viacom has deals with Netflix Inc. and Hulu LLC, such deals accounted for more than a third of that growth.
At the same time, though, ad revenue for the TV networks fell by about 3% both in the U.S. and globally. The U.S. decline reflected a shrinking audience at kids channel Nickelodeon, which some analysts have attributed at least partly to kids watching Nickelodeon shows like “SpongeBob SquarePants” on services like those offered by Netflix.