Never mind Tribune ... What about the really big boys?
It seems that Tribune isn't the only big media company to be suffering some stock market blues these days. The really big boys - the "first-tier" TransNational Corporations that we hear so much about - are also hurting. CNNMoney reports that stock prices for the four biggest corporations – Walt Disney, Viacom, News Corp and Time Warner - "are down an average of 11.2 percent through the first three quarters of 2005." The article also notes that the S&P 500 was up 1.3 percent over the same period, so the media companies can't blame their lousy performance on a sluggish market.
In effect, there's been a major selloff of big media stocks going on. CNNMoney notes a number of reasons for this. Investors are worried about a weak advertising market, slow Hollywood box office sales this summer, and (even more worrying), flattening DVD sales. "What's more," notes the article, "many investors appear to be more attracted to the supercharged growth prospects of pure play Internet media companies like Google and Yahoo!."
Of course, we have to remember that this is only a relative downturn: Big media are still immensely profitable overall. And CNNMoney suggests that the selloff might have been overdone. But clearly the bloom is off the Big Media rose . . . at least for the moment.
posted by hdougie at 10/05/2005 07:32:00 PM
1 Comments:
I see this down turn for these media conglomerates' stocks to be a good thing. I feel that it is proof that these conglomerates are just a fad and eventually will lose their emmense power.Don't get me wrong, I still believe that Walt Disney and the like will continue to be a media power house, but I believe that the free market of the U.S. is finally proving itself and showing that monoploies cannot exist. I attribute this stock fall to the fact that audiences always want to newest form of entertainment. First it was the CD, then it was the DVD, and now it is the internet. No one product will ever hold supreme. This makes for better competition and mroe diversity in the media market world. And so, although the big media cmpanies may not be thrilled with their stocks right now, I Am! Such transitions are paving the way for new companies and technologies to get their "feet in the door."
Post a Comment
<< Home