Wall St., TV Stocks End Week on High Note

Wall Street rallied for the second straight day Friday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 386.75 points, or 3.35%, to close the week at 11,388.44.

Cable and broadcasters mostly chalked up impressive gains. In prior-day trading, broadcasters surpassed gains of cablers, but Friday they marched in lock-step.

But it was a week of jangled nerves as the stock market nose-dived Monday and Wednesday but finished the week down only slightly.

Friday’s gain was helped by TV companies telling investment conferences during the week that the unsettled financial market did not directly impact their businesses. Broadcasters emphasized that they were making gains in retransmission-consent revenue.

Leaders in broadcast-sector trading Friday were Nexstar Broadcasting Group, shares of which jumped 10.5%, Entravision Communications, up 8.9%, and LIN TV, up 7.2%

In the cable sector Friday, Cablevision Systems rose 8.4%, Mediacom Communications climbed 6.1% and Viacom advanced 3.7%. However, cable-systems giants Comcast and Time Warner Cable had much smaller gains.

News Corp. -- parent of Fox Broadcasting and cable networks -- gained 5% and diversified cable giant Time Warner climbed 4.3% Friday.

The whole stock market rallied after word of a federal government bailout of banks to loosen up the credit crunch heartened investors.