STV has slipped to a £900,000 pre-tax loss because of a £13.5 million bill to settle its legal dispute with ITV.
Stripping out that one-off cost and a £1.4m restructuring settlement the Scottish media company actually saw its pre-tax profits before exceptional items rise 12% to £14m.
Revenues for 2011 fell from £111.7m to £102m partially due to the sale of the Pearl and Dean business.
Regional advertising was down by 13% and national by 3% while production revenues dropped 14% to £8.4m as an increased number of hours across multiple programmes could not make up for the lack of Taggart commissions.
Those declines were partially offset by a rise in digital income which grew by 69% to £7.1m.
Rob Woodward, chief executive, said: "It is a strong, robust set of numbers and we hit the city's expectations.
"We are delighted profitability continues to increase in a relatively weak advertising market.
"In particular we are pleased with the continued expansion of digital activities. The 69% uplift in digital revenues shows we are on track to fundamentally change the earnings profile of the business."
The Glasgow company is targeting a doubling of digital and production revenues by 2016 so that a third of turnover comes from non-broadcast activities.
It plans to launch two new consumer products but declined to give details.
However Mr Woodward suggested they would be along similar lines to the relaunch of Scottish Passport which has a spin-off partnership with Barrhead Travel.
The outlook for the advertising market in the first quarter of 2012 remains muted with overall airtime revenues predicted to be down 4%.
The Scottish market is on course for a 14% rise but this is not being seen as the start of a recovery.
Mr Woodward said: "The Scottish market tends to be more volatile than the national market just because of its size.
"It has had a strong performance in the first quarter but I would not read too much into that. Overall we are not expecting any strong recovery in the course of this year.
"We do not see the Olympics having any significant commercial benefits but the European Championships football traditionally performs extremely well in Scotland so we would expect to see a commercial uplift from that."
STV also announced a two-year re-commission from the BBC for the Antiques Road Trip show.
A further four series of the programme, which amounts to 120 episodes, are being produced.
Mr Woodward said: "The BBC is now our largest single client in production which underlines the fundamental shift under Alan Clements' stewardship.
"We have moved away from being a production company which was reliant on crime drama for ITV to being one working with every UK terrestrial broadcaster and a number of other channels across multiple genres."
On its digital platforms unique users hit three million and page impressions 17 million in the final quarter of the year with an increasing amount of traffic coming from mobile devices.
Losses at the STV Local arm widened from £400,000 to £900,000 but Mr Woodward confirmed that the company remained "committed" to the initiative with plans for further expansion during 2012 including enhanced services in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
He said: "We believe there is a strong opportunity and we will continue to roll out to other communities across the rest of the year."
The company intends to reintroduce dividends "as soon as possible" but wants to bring its net debt to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) ratio down further before doing so.
Net debt increased by 4% during the year from £52.2m to £54.5m.
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