NBC Universal—which runs, among other things, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Universal Studios, and a bunch of theme parks—pulled in a profit of $391 million in the first quarter of 2009, versus $712 million in the first quarter of the previous year.

It's yet another colossal failure in Zucker's cap: He single-handedly engineered the demise of NBC from first place to fourth; he spent insane amounts of money on the Olympics in Athens and Beijing, which netted great ratings but not enough ad revenue to keep profits growing; he hired a club-kid to run NBC; and he acknowledged defeat last month. But he keeps on keeping his job, maybe because he dazzles and confuses his General Electric boss Jeffrey Immelt with reflections from his exceedingly bald head.

NBC Universal blames the profit drop squarely on the broadcast television unit, which lets it mask poor executive decisions behind the general advertising recession. Yes, local TV advertising is down because nobody is buying cars. But NBC also says that the Super Bowl was a drag on profits:

While NBC aired Super Bowl XLIII to great ratings success, there were significant production costs to air the big game, combined with rights fees paid to the NFL. Those expenses added up to $45 million in the quarter.

"Ratings success" understates it: Super Bowl 43 was the most-watched Super Bowl game in history, and the second-most watched program in the history of television. That's right: NBC Universal is explaining it's poor performance last quarter by saying that it got stuck with broadcasting the No. 2 television broadcast since the medium was invented. Tough luck guys!

Also dragging down profits were expenses relating to the Beijing Olympics, another huge ratings success that, in the normal course of business, ought to mean more money, not less. DVD sales were also down significantly.

On the upside, NBC Universal's cable networks were up 19%, which explains why executives were describing boring old USA this week as the company's "single biggest asset."

Yes, good ole USA Network is busy paying the bills while NBC honcho Ben Silverman naked arm wrestles with people and Lauren Zalaznick at Bravo obsesses over hipsters in Bushwick.

"USA is the single biggest asset that we currently have at this company," an NBC Universal cable exec told the Associated Press.

The network had more viewers than any other cable network in history in the the first quarter. USA and SciFi (soon to be "SyFy") Channel alone threw off $1 billion in profit last year, or about a third of the take for the entire company, which has upwards of eight networks and a studio production operation, among other assets, but which makes two thirds of its TV money off cable channels.

USA "really hit the jackpot," AP writes, on re-runs of shows like House and NCIS. Then there's the booming pro wrestling segment and original USA cop shows like Monk and In Plain Sight.

It's great that the advertising depression is bringing USA good press, because as soon as the easy money returns it's getting sent back to the nerd table with SyFy and the Weather Channel faster than you can say "Walker, Texas Ranger."

Once confined to HBO and then Showtime, top-shelf programming has spread to smaller networks like AMC, home to Mad Men, and even Lifetime, future host to Runway. Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, with their fake news shows, have a level of influence that meets and even, at times, exceeds that of the broadcast news anchors.

As this process continues and even smaller networks come up with distinctive hits that grow their audiences — think TNT, FX, Sci Fi and the Food Network — cable will have achieved something of an advertiser's holy grail: Narrow targeting combined with deep reach, something never really possible on broadcast television and still being tinkered with online. The efficiency of advertising on these networks, by the way, happens to be quite attractive when you economy is slowly melting.

The cable boom will be pretty glorious, at least until advertisers wise up about how many viewers are digitally skipping right over their commercials, at which point product placement will poison all that creative fun, and everyone will be sad until the Sex And The City of iTunes comes along and moves the fun to yet another medium.

(Photo: Rick on Flickr)