Where is the bottom?

Radio stocks ended February at an all-time low and TV stocks also slumped badly. But with the US economy teetering on recession and not much enthusiasm about the advertising marketplace, the question now is whether we’ve even seen the worst.

More and more radio stocks fell into double-digit percentage losses year-to-date in February – 23 of them, up from 11 at the end of January. The RBR Radio Index, which had been down 14.77% for 2008 at the end of Janaury, was down 21.41% YTD at the end of February. Citadel closed at an all-time low of 1.09 (it actually hit 1.00 in trading) on 2/29, a YTD drop of 47.09%. Only Salem was worse, off 49.92% this year.

Even with a political windfall on the horizon – indeed, already begun in some markets – Wall Street is not enthusiastic about television stocks either. The two-month-old TVBR Television Index ended February at its lowest point yet. Sinclair remained the best performer among TV stocks, actually improving from its January gain of 9.62% to be up 12.42% year-to-date at the end of February. But, while five TV stocks had been up YTD at the end of January, only three could make that claim at the end of February. The other two were ACME and Disney. (Ion, which had been one of those up the previous month, completed its going private transaction and ceased trading.)

If it’s any consolation, the rest of the stock market was under pressure from the soft economy. Long-time Wall Street Google, which RBR/TVBR tracks because of its business serving as a middleman selling broadcast ad inventory, was down 31.86% YTD at the end of February. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, though, had fallen only 1.58% through the first two months of 2008.

© 2008 Radio Business Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

*adjusted for 2/8 spin-off of newspapers © 2008 Radio Business Report, Inc. All rights reserved.