Frontal ’n’ center

Bee sting helps to lift Time Warner

Time Warner’s comedy shows are reaping a bundle on the Trump presidency.

The New York media giant said Wednesday that ratings for those shows — as well as for its CNN operation — were vastly improved in the first quarter.

At the same time, a strong three months for its Warner Bros. studio — including the success of its “Lego Batman Movie” ($308 million in worldwide box office) and “Kong: Skull Island” ($562 million) — helped produce overall earnings per share of $1.66, beating Wall Street expectations.

However, a 2 percent decline in ad revenue in the quarter and continued weakness into the current quarter gave investors the jitters, pushing Time Warner shares down 28 cents, to $99.05.

TBS’ “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” was the No. 1 show in its time slot among 18- to 34-year-olds, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said on a conference call. “Full Frontal” runs just once a week, on Wednesday night, but there are rumored plans to increase its frequency.

Bee last week hosted an alternative broadcast to the White House Correspondents’ Association’s dinner.

Meanwhile, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” recorded its biggest season ever on Time Warner’s HBO, and “Real Time With Bill Maher” reported a 22 percent increase in ratings.

HBO saw a 2 percent in- crease in subscribers in the quarter, the company said.

Still, rising sports costs — largely TBS’ and TNT’s rights fees paid to the NBA — dented Time Warner’s Turner unit, which, like all programmers, is getting slammed by an exodus of pay-TV subscribers. The Post reported Tuesday that almost half a million consumers stopped paying for video packages in the first quarter.

Operating income fell 6 percent to $1.2 billion at Turner, while programming expenses increased 17 percent thanks to a new NBA right deal.

Revenue rose 6 percent to $3.1 billion at the Turner unit thanks to a 12 percent boost in subscription revenue, but ad revenue slid 2 percent.

Turner boss John Martin said advertisers were taking a wait-and-see approach with their spending plans, particularly tech and pharmaceutical companies.

HBO boss Richard Plepler noted that shows it supplies to Amazon’s Prime TV service would disappear come 2018 because the company is seeing growth in its channel sales, which are packaged as a tier on the Amazon service.

Overall profit was up 17.3 percent, and revenue rose 6 percent, to $7.7 billion.

Telecom firm AT&T is set to acquire Time Warner by the end of the year if regulators approve the deal.