Media companies have been as subject to the difficult financial conditions as other companies in recent weeks, with stock prices reflecting declining confidence in their prospects and in some cases heading for a possible change of ownership.  Perhaps the most apocalyptic description of the coming destruction has come from the UK.  “We are standing at the brink of what will be two years of carnage for western media,” Emily Bell, the digital director at UK’s Guardian, said at a conference in the UK last week, as reported in the Guardian.  “In the UK five nationals could go out of business and we could be left with no UK owned broadcaster outside of the BBC. We are facing complete market failure in local papers and regional radio. This is systematic collapse not just a cyclical downturn.”

But multinationals with strong balance sheets, such as News Corp. (Fox, etc.) are also seeing trouble ahead.  News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting last week that “Fiscal 2009 will be a year of many – in some cases unprecedented – challenges.  We cannot fool ourselves into believing otherwise.”  

DC parent Time Warner’s stock price has been hammered, with concerns about the ad-supported portions of the business weighing down over-all expectations.