Media Giants, Cable Fare Best in Stock-Market Drop

Wall Street suffered a second down day Tuesday, with TV, cable and big media conglomerates falling less than the 1.47% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which came after Monday’s 3.27% tumble.

The broad stock market had another roller-coaster ride Tuesday before settling at 10,854.17, down 161.52 points for the day.

Broadcasting stocks were almost uniformly lower after Sinclair Broadcast Group said political, automotive and fast-food local advertising will not meet expectations for the third quarter. Sinclair stock fell 5.1%, but bigger declines were incurred by Nexstar Broadcasting Group (down 13%) and Entravision Communications (off 5.2%).

But elsewhere in media, the damage was less severe. Big capitalization media/entertainment companies took modest declines. Rupert Murdoch-led News Corp. slipped 0.31%, Time Warner was off 0.43% and Disney fell 1.15%.

Cable stocks generally weathered Tuesday’s storm. Cablevision Systems gained 3%, Liberty Media climbed 2.1% and Time Warner Cable advanced 0.81%. However, Mediacom Communications fell 6.6% and satellite-TV provider Dish Network dropped 3.4%.

Investors are fretting over the collapse of the credit market since Sept. 15 and the proposed government bailout of banks to get loans going again to businesses and consumers.