Yahoo $42M write-down caused by unprofitable 'Community'

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- Yahoo's chief financial officer said the company's $42 million write-down in the third quarter was caused by unprofitable original video series such as Community and Sin City Saints.

Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman made the comments during a call with investors after releasing Yahoo's third-quarter earnings on Tuesday.

"We thought long and hard about it,"Goldman said. "What we concluded is certain of our original video content, we couldn't see a way to make money over time. I'm thinking of Community, I'm thinking of Sin City Saints and so forth."

Yahoo's earnings for the third quarter of 2015 fell short to $0.15 earnings per share -- lower than Wall Street expectations of $0.17 earnings per share and much lower than the $0.52 earnings per share Yahoo saw the same quarter last year.

"So there, where we had spent money and had some assets on our balance sheet, we elected to write those off. That actually helps us going forward and we won't have the expense to impact us going forward," Goldman said.

Yahoo also reported revenue of $1.23 billion, short of the projected $1.26 billion. It is unclear if Yahoo will pick up another season of streaming-original Community, canceled by NBC in May 2014.

"In thinking through that, we thought of not only what is the cost, but what is the cost to market and create the streams you need to make them successful," Goldman added. "So we're not saying we're not going to do these at all in the future, but what we're saying is in three cases, at least, it didn't work we had hoped it would work, and we decided to move on."