Southern Cross Austereo chief executive Rhys Holleran is hopeful there will be a pick-up at the struggling Ten Network.

Ten supplies programming to Southern Cross Austereo’s regional television stations.

Southern Cross Austereo’s 2011/12 full year results, released on Wednesday, showed Ten’s lacklustre ratings prompted a 8.2 per cent decline in its television advertising revenue.

However, Mr Holleran said he had “every confidence” in Ten.

“While market conditions were in fact negative – they weren’t great – principally our result was driven out of lower ratings,” Mr Holleran said.

“We are supportive of our partners at Ten and are hopeful of an improvement in the year ahead.”

Despite the struggles in television, Southern Cross Austereo reported net profit of $95 million for the 12 months to June 30, up 48.3 per cent from the prior year.

Mr Holleran said Southern Cross Austereo’s radio stations performed strongly, particularly in the highly competitive Sydney and Melbourne markets.

Figures from ratings agency OZTam showed Ten had only 6.5 per cent of metropolitan free-to-air viewers on its main channel on Saturday, August 25, and just 6.6 per cent the following evening.

It was some of the lowest viewing figures for a commercial television network in more than a decade.

Mr Holleran said ratings at Southern Cross Austereo’s television stations were “a couple of points under where we were” 12 months ago.

“In a flat advertising market, if your ratings are off 10 per cent you don’t have to be clever at maths to work out what that means in terms of your revenue outlooks,” Mr Holleran said.

Mr Holleran said market conditions were tough, with the final three months of 2011/12 particularly challenging and that there was little to cheer about so far in the current financial year.

Southern Cross Austereo declared a final fully franked dividend of five cents per share.

At 1530 AEST, the stock was down 0.5 cent at $1.225.