After a boffo first half, media companies over the next two weeks will report disappointing results for the third quarter, according to one Wall Street analyst.
The lackluster quarter, after most media company shares have posted gains of 20 percent to 30 percent this year, is the result of competition from the Summer Olympics on NBC, which sucked up all the ratings and the advertising revenue, and a poor summer box office, said Bernstein Research’s Todd Juenger.
Also contributing to an underwhelming summer quarter are plummeting ratings and new competition on Thursdays from the NFL Network, media watchers said.
Nielsen, based in downtown Manhattan, will also have difficulty tallying ratings results because of the widespread damage from Hurricane Sandy.
A slew of major media companies will unfurl earnings for the period ended Sept. 30 next week — including Discovery Communications and News Corporation (owner of The Post), on Nov. 6; Time Warner and CBS on Nov. 7; and Disney on Nov. 8.
“Expectations for the [calendar] third quarter are very low, as the Olympics stole an avalanche of ratings points and ad dollars,” Juenger writes.
Only two major cable groups — Discovery Communications and A&E Television Networks, owned by Disney and Hearst — had increased year-on-year ratings for the period.
Studio segments at big media companies are unlikely to show much strength based on Box Office Mojo’s monthly tallies — July receipts fell 15 percent, August rose 6 percent and September fell 14.8 percent.
In his report, Juenger wonders how much CNN’s ratings fall will affect the mothership — despite some strong summertime original programming and investment at TNT.
The analyst also anticipates a possible acquisition of a general entertainment network by CBS, given recent commentary by CBS chief Les Moonves that he’d do better than others in the cable business.
The outspoken Bernstein analyst pulled no punches in his assessment of Viacom, reporting on Nov. 15.
“Investors seems to have completely written off [the quarter], which will be awful with ratings down mid-teens, plus affiliate fee headwind from nine days of a DirecTV blackout,” he wrote.