By David B. Wilkerson

CHICAGO (Dow Jones) -- Shares of newspaper publisher and broadcaster Media General Inc. fell as much as 19% Thursday after the company reported dismal fourth-quarter results and said it would suspend its dividend due to an uncertain economic outlook.

Before the market opened, Richmond, Va.-based Media General (MEG) said it swung to a fourth-quarter loss on a charge related to the diminished value of some of its assets and a steep decline in print advertising revenues, reflecting the industry's painful transition to an online model.

The dividend suspension on Media General's Class A and Class B shares will allow the company to "direct additional cash flow to the reduction of our debt," said Marshall Morton, chief executive, in a statement.

Last September, the company cut its quarterly dividend by nearly half, to 12 cents a share.

Media General shares were down 51 cents to $2.33 in afternoon trading on Thursday.

Media General said it lost $85.5 million, or $3.86 a share, in the three months ended Dec. 31. The loss includes a non-cash after-tax impairment charge of $83.1 million, reflecting the reduced value of Federal Communications Commission licenses issued to its television stations and network affiliation agreements maintained by those stations.

Across the U.S., media companies have seen the market values of their TV and radio stations drop far below their book values as the perception of media assets has waned over the past year. Such companies are required to make note of the discrepancy in those values and account for the difference.

Excluding the impairment charge and other items, Media General would have earned $8.6 million, or 39 cents a share, in the latest quarter. In the year-earlier period, excluding severance costs, the company earned $10.2 million, or 46 cents a share.

Revenue dropped nearly 12% to $207 million, reflecting a 20% decline in newspaper advertising revenue.

In December, Media General's revenue fell 17.5% from the same month a year earlier to $56.1 million, spurred by a 37% decline in classified ad revenue at its newspapers.

Fourth-quarter revenue at the company's newspapers, including the Tampa Tribune, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal and 21 other dailies, fell 17%.

Classified ad revenue, traditionally the most important source of income for newspapers, dropped 38%, driven primarily by declines in the company's three largest markets: Tampa, Richmond and Winston-Salem. In those three areas, help-wanted ad revenue plunged 60%, real estate by 50%, and automotive by 46%.

In recent years, newspaper classifieds had been curtailed to some degree by competitors like Craigslist and Monster.com -- but the economic downturn that became a worldwide financial meltdown in the second half of 2008 has sent classified revenues crashing through the floor, as year-over-year decreases of 30% or more have become commonplace, in markets of varying sizes.

At Media General's 19 television stations in the fourth quarter, revenue fell 7%, with gross ad sales down 6.4%. As with so many other local TV outlets across the country, a precipitous fall-off in automotive ads was the main reason for the decline.

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