• by Wayne Friedman , August 14, 2019

With some signals showing a recession could be near, big stock market indices showed massive declines on Wednesday. Media stocks were not immune.

The Dow Jones Industrials tanked a steep 3% -- 800 points -- to close at 25,479.42. Other market indices, the Nasdaq and S&P 500, also fell 3% each -- settling at 7,773.94 and 2,840.60, respectively.

The biggest declines for media included traditional TV companies. Sinclair Broadcast Group sank 8.6% to $43.40, while CBS lost 8.3% to $44.65, Nexstar Media Group was down 7.2% to $92.08, Discovery Inc. was down 7.1% to $27.49, and Viacom fell 6.5% to $28.76.

CBS and Viacom had been part of the same corporate structure between 1999 and 2006.

Some big digital media players were hit a little less. Facebook was down 4.6% to $179.71, while Netflix dropped 4.2% to $299.11, Amazon slipped 3.4% to $1,762, Apple fell 3% to $202.75, and Google lost 2.7% to $1,164.

Among new ad tech companies, Rubicon Project was down 6.7% to $9.49, Criteo SA gave up 6.1% to $18.35, and The Trade Desk fell 5.4% to $250.39.

Three cable TV-centric companies lost less: AMC Networks was down 2.8% to $49.72,  Comcast Corp. was down 2.5% to $42.37, and Charter Communications was only down 1.1% to $375.18.

Along with Charter, Dish Network and Nielsen Holdings also lost. Dish was down 1.8% to $31.71, while Nielsen slid 1.7% to $20.92.