• by Wayne Friedman , February 28, 2020

Although media stocks were hit with dramatic weekly declines along with the major stock market indices at large -- around 14% over the last five days, due to mounting concerns over coronavirus -- a number of companies witnessed gains and recovered to some extent on Friday.

Among the media stocks tipping up, AMC Networks witnessed a 9.5% rise to $31.00, with ViacomCBS increasing 3.0% to $24.61, Discovery Inc. up 4.2% to $25.70, Nexstar Media Group 2.8% higher to $114.98, and Roku up 3.3% to $113.67.

Still, bigger and more widely held media and technology stocks showed declines on Friday, in line with broader stock market indices: Comcast Corp., down 1.5% to $40.43; Charter Communications, 3.0% lower to $493.17, Walt Disney, down 0.3% to $117.65, and Fox Corp., 1.7% lower to $30.45.

Through five days of trading, ending on Friday, major market indices witnessed dramatic declines that for many analysts had not been seen since 2008.

This was in line with media stock indexes: Dow Jones U.S. Media Agencies Index was down 12.4%, while the Dow Jones U.S. Media Index was off 13% and the Dow Jones U.S. Broadcasting & Entertainment Index also lost 13%.

The Dow Jones Industrials was down nearly 4,000 points -- 13% for the week -- to 25,409.

Although Netflix was down 0.7% to $369.03 on Friday, it was up earlier this week -- as well as seeing slight gains for a while on Friday. Analysts say this was partly attributable to concerns that the big streaming platform might gain from consumers staying home and avoiding movie theaters.

More digital-focused media companies slipped much less -- or showed some growth -- on Friday, with Amazon virtually flat at $1,883 and Apple remaining about the same, down 0.1% to $268.34. Two other high-profile digital media companies had gains -- Google was up 1.9% to $1,339 and Facebook was 1.4% higher to $192.47.

Smaller advertising technology and media measurement companies showed strong gains on Friday, with Comscore gaining 17% to $3.50 and The Trade Desk adding 15% to $287.25.

Among other advertising technology companies, Rubicon Project and Telaria, two supply-side platforms with plans to merge, were also higher, with Rubicon adding 6.4% to $11.35 and Telaria 5.7% higher to $12.22.