Yet another radio and TV stock analyst has gotten his pink slip. Bank of America is the latest Wall Street firm to decide it can do without anyone covering broadcasting stocks and has bid adieu to Jonathan Jacoby, as well as folks covering a couple of other media sectors. Jacoby had been with BofA since May 2003 and was covering broadcasting stocks for a couple of years before that at Suntrust Robertson Humphrey. There was no immediate word on whether other analysts at BofA might pick up some of the broadcast companies that Jacoby had been following, including such names as CBS, Clear Channel, Citadel, Cox Radio, Disney, Emmis, Entercom, Entravision, News Corporation, Radio One, SBS, Sirius, Viacom and XM. His layoff comes just a few days after Deutsche Bank decided that it, too, could do without a pure-play broadcast analyst and cut loose James Dix (1/21/08 RBR #13).
RBR/TVBR observation: RBR/TVBR readers know that we had quoted Jacoby’s research pieces frequently, so we will miss sharing his views with you. His email notifying us of his departure from BofA expressed the hope that this will be a short “respite” before he resumes his dialogue with us about stocks. We hope that’s the case, but it certainly looks like a tough time to be finding anyone hiring media analysts on Wall Street.
