• by Wayne Friedman , August 1, 2008

Media stocks have been hammered for months, but for the second day in a row, a cable system company has strongly bucked that trend. Even with Cablevision System Corp.'s second quarter profits in free-fall, down some 70% versus a year ago to $98.3 million, Cablevision's stock soared a major 15% in midday trading to $23.99. Part of the huge swing was the inclusion of a sale of FSN New England in the second-quarter 2007 earnings.

Just like with Comcast's second-quarter results the day before--which witness its stock price spiked--investors seems to be reacting favorably to results showing that Cablevision is thwarting new competition from Verizon and AT&T with their new video IPTV-like services.

Verizon FiOS high-speed-broadband service reaches about 1.1 million customers within Cablevision's territory.

The company's overall second-quarter revenue improved 13% to $1.7 billion. Cablevision's cable-TV revenue rose to $1.24 billion from $1.21 billion, driven by growth in digital video, broadband and phone customers.

Digital-video subscribers rose by 120,000, or 4.5% versus the previous quarter, while climbing 9.4% from 2007. The company added 52,000 broadband customers--a 2.2% increase from the first quarter. Subscribers were up 11% from the June 2007 quarter.

Still, equity analysts continue to worry about the inconsistency and strife over the last year or so among Cablevision's founding Dolan family. In addition, the company has made repeated attempts to take the company private.

James Dolan, president and CEO of Cablevision, said during the company's second-quarter earnings conference call, that he and other Cablevision executives plan to be more open to suggestions from shareholders.