Most Media Stocks Take A Hit During Wild Week

U.S. stocks closed their most turbulent week in years with a sharp swing higher, temporarily stemming the bleeding in the market but doing little to quell investors’ fears of a prolonged downturn ahead.

The Wall Street Journal reports major U.S. indexes ended the week more than 5% lower, their worst loss in more than two years. Investors described the volatility as a shock after more than a year of tranquility in markets.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average—which rallied 330 points, or 1.4% Friday—had swung at least 1,000 points in all but one day this week and changed direction a total of 53 times.

After dropping more than 3% on Monday and Thursday, the Dow and S&P 500 entered correction territory—a fall of more than 10% from their highs two weeks ago.

Dow Jones' U.S. Broadcasting & Entertainment index was down 6% to 1,269.53 and the Dow Jones U.S. Media Index was down 5.7% to 851.55, more or less following the Dow Jones Industrial index dipping down 5.2% to 24,190.

For the week, Comcast Corp. lost 6.2% to $38.57; Walt Disney was down 5.2% to $103.09; CBS was off 4.8% to $52.76; Time Warner was down 4.5% to $92.40; and Discovery gave back 5% to $22.61.

MediaPost reports 21st Century Fox did generally better than most -- off 2.7% to $35.73.

Two major losers were traditional pay TV providers: Charter Communications, down 10% to $349.43 and Dish Network sinking 7.3% to $43.40.

For the week, Viacom was the rare media stock to move higher -- 2% to $32.87 -- while AMC Networks barely moved, slipping 0.3% to $50.94. Scripps Networks Interactive sank 1.5% to $86.61.

Major digital media/technology stocks were generally affected more than traditional media, with Facebook down 7.5% to $176.11, Amazon losing 6.3% to $1,339, Netflix off 6.7% to $249.47, and Google moving backwards 6.5% to $1,046.

Big pure-play TV station groups performed generally better than traditional media and digital media stocks: Sinclair Broadcast Group was down 3.6% to $34.95; Tribune Media slipped 1.1% to $42.19; Tegna was off 4.8% to $13.34; and Nexstar Media Group dipped 4.8% to $71.05.