Big Media Companies are Losing Value, as Yahoo, Google Gain

Posted by Ben Compaine

Media economist Daniel English joins Adam Thierer in evaluating the market performance of five large media stocks (Time Warner, News Corp., Clear Channel, Comcast, and Viacom) over the past five years. Individually they have all declined in value. As a group they have lost 52% of their market value (in terms of market capitalization). Almost as surprising, the performance of the entire Dow Jones U.S. Broadcasting & Entertainment Index is nearly 45% below where it stood in 2000. Considered in conjunction with the results of other recent studies, they view this as another indication of the media industry's intense competitive rivalry. Indeed, in 2004 Google and Yahoo generated $4 billion in new revenue—the same amount as the 10 largest newspaper companies combined. The paper is "Testing 'Media Monopoly' Claims: A Look at What Markets Say."