• by Wayne Friedman , March 9, 2020

Many media companies were caught in steeper stock market declines at Monday morning opening due to coronavirus concerns -- as well as plunging oil prices -- with stock market indices sinking more than 7%. At one point the Dow Jones Industrials was down 1,900 points.

The decline was so steep that trading at the New York Stock Exchange was briefly halted, and when it resumed, witnessed indices that slightly cut back those earlier losses: the Dow Jones Industrial Index was down 5.6% to 24,383, while the S&P 500 gave up 5.5% to 2808 and the Nasdaq was off 5.1% to 433.71.

Media companies saw stocks sinking: Viacom (down 8.8%); TiVo (9.3%); Dish Network (8.5%); Facebook, (5.7%); Nielsen Holdings (6.7%);  Nexstar Media Group (6.1%); and Comcast Corp. (5.7%).

Media/advertising technology platform-based stock showed the biggest declines, with Tremor International off 15.5%, Rubicon Project losing 9.4%, Telaria down 9.5%, and the Trade Desk down 7.7%.

Major media indices showed similar results, with the Dow Jones Media Index down 5.4% to 857.97, the Dow Jones U.S. Broadcasting & Entertainment index losing 5.3% to 1,285.59, and the Dow Jones Media Agency Index sinking 6.4% to 458.22.

Among the best-performing media stocks were Tegna, up 1.9% to $17.32; Roku, down 1.8% to $100.22; and Amazon, down 3.1% to $1,842.06.