• by Wayne Friedman , September 4, 2015

Since their dramatic fall about a month ago, media stocks have dropped a massive 14% in one month, according to one measure -- much broader losses than overall U.S. stock market declines.

S&P Media has sunk 14% -- 61.67 points -- to 547.29 -- from August 4 through Sept. 3. By way of comparison, Dow Jones Industrials is only down 7% to 16,374.76; S&P 500 and Nasdaq are also both off 7% -- S&P 500 to 1,951.13 and Nasdaq to 4,733.50.

CBS has fallen 17% during that period, closing at $43.81 on Thursday, September 3, Walt Disney has given up 16% to $101.99; Time Warner is off 20% to $70.70; 21st Century Fox is down 19% to $27.19; and Discovery Communications is 17% lower to $27.12.

Other media stocks have been less hit less hard: Charter Communications only slipped 2.4% to $182.88 and Time Warner Cable was down 1.4% to $188.08. Charter has agreed in principal to a $55 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable.

Big TV station group Sinclair Broadcast Group is down 11%, to land at $25.97. Another TV station group -- Tegna -- has lost 19% to $23.41. For two midsize cable TV network groups, Scripps Networks Interactive went 14% south to $53.78; and AMC Networks has given up 16% to $71.59.

Dish Network has been hit a bit less than other media companies during the month -- down 9% to $59.78. Comcast has been off 11% to $56.27.

New digital media did better than the overall media market -- losing less, with Facebook sinking 6% to $88.15 and Netflix down 10% to $101.06. Over the last six months, Netflix’s stock is up 49%.

Media stocks started their massive fall after news Walt Disney’s ESPN was losing some subscribers that buy into traditional pay TV providers packages -- cable, satellite, and telco.

That fostered more real fears over consumer “cord-cutting” of pay TV providers. It caused a ripple affect to other similar big media companies -- and then to virtually all TV-based media companies.