Flavor Flav to the Rescue!

Flavor Flav, the Public Enemy hypeman turned VH1 reality TV star, is now lending a hand in Viacom's boardroom — sort of. He's part of what boosted Viacom's 2007 revenue 18 percent to $13.4 billion.

VH1 said 2007 was its best year ever in terms of ratings thanks in part to successful spin-offs from its original hit show "Flavor of Love" where women fight — literally — for a chance at a relationship with the rapper, whose given name is William Jonathan Drayton Jr.

"Our investments in original programming [across our media networks] paid off, driving ratings gains and putting us in a strong position to continue to grow advertising revenues," Viacom president and C.E.O. Philippe Dauman said in a statement.

After 22 consecutive quarters of period-over-year growth, VH1 reached 25 percent more viewers than in 2006. It also began to outshine its dominant sister network MTV. In four of the last 18 months, VH1 on average has attracted more viewers over age 2.

"Domestic advertising revenues increased 7 percent led by strong growth at MTV, Nick at Nite, VH1 and TV Land," chief administrative officer Tom Dooley said about the fourth quarter during Thursday's conference call with analysts.

For the year, Viacom posted a 6 percent increase in domestic advertising revenue from its media networks. While the company does not disclose the actual value of domestic ad revenue, worldwide ad revenues were up 8 percent to $4.69 billion for the year.

Viacom doesn't break out VH1's advertising revenue either, but market research firm TNS Media Intelligence does. In 2006, VH1 earned $460 million from advertising sales, while in 2007 VH1 saw $566 million in ad revenue, an increase of 23 percent.

Pretty good, considering that market research firm TNS predicted cable ad revenue would increase only 4.6 percent this year.

by Willow Duttge

**Photograph of Flavor Flav at the Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav by Matt Sayles/Associated Press**

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