Cable, Media Stocks Swoon As Dow Plunges 634 Points
Cable stocks swooned along with the stock market Monday, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below 11,000 for the first time since November.
The Dow fell more than 500 points by mid-day, the first trading day after Standard& Poor's downgraded the federal government's debt rating, and finished down 634 points to 10,809, its biggest point drop since December 2008.
It was the third day of heavy losses for the index in about a week - the DJIA lost 265 points on Aug.2 and 512 points on Aug. 4.
Cable stocks were pounded with the rest of the market - among the biggest losers were Cablevision Systems, down 9% or $1.94 to $19.56; Charter Communications (down 8.7% or $4 each to $42.06);; Time Warner Cable, down 7.2% or $4.90 to $63.10 per share; and Comcast, down 6.3% or $1.45 to $20.43 per share. On the programming side, AMC Networks was down 12.8% ($4.51 each) to $30.71; News Corp. fell 7.7% ($1.16) to $14.01; Scripps Networks dropped 7.1% ($2.88) to $37.64; Viacom dipped 6.7% ($3.49) to $48.60; Discovery Communications fell 6.7% ($2.49) to $34.75; Disney was down 5.9% ($2.08 each ) to $33.10); and Time Warner fell 5.6% ($1.78 each) to $29.96.
Dish Network, slated to report second quarter earnings tomorrow, fell 10% ($2.48) to $22.64 and DirecTV dipped 7% ($3.28) to $42.11 each.
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