Marketwide surge
Viv U, AOL TW join in broad board rally
It was perhaps appropriate that recent market laggard Vivendi Universal went to the head of the class in the latest sesh.
Viv U, which is Universal Studios' Paris-based corporate parent, has been beset in recent months by a red tide of fiscal woes. But conglom Tuesday posted a sector-leading 8.4% rise to close at $13.14 in its U.S.-listed shares after announcing an eight-month extension in its credit line to June 30.
AOL Time Warner, only a bit less bedraggled by fiscal hard times of late, was just a half-step back among the rallying media stocks. New York-based conglom enjoyed a 7.1% rise to close at $12.13 as execs introduced a new version of AOL's America Online Web-access service.
Sesh proved similarly upbeat among other studio stocks.
Viacom's most widely tracked Class "B" shares rose 6.5%, MGM stock leaped 6.2%, and 20th Century Fox parent News Corp. -- which has broadcast rights for the baseball World Series -- jumped 5.7%. Disney -- which owns the Series-participating Anaheim Angels -- climbed 4.2%, and Sony was up 3.1%.
But the surge wasn't limited to studio parents.
Cable systems operator Comcast posted an 8.2% gain on the day, and rival cabler Cablevision was up 6.1% amid continued speculation about possible asset sales to improve company balance sheets. Exhibitor AMC Entertainment enjoyed a 3.8% stock rise, but exhib Regal Entertainment Group rose less than 1%.
Bull skepticism
Analysts were hesitant to declare categorically that the stock market will sustain its recent bullish behavior after a long-running bear market. But the media sector could be well positioned to participate in any upturn.
"This rally is marking a reprieve for battered media investors, but we're not out of the woods yet," UBS analyst Christopher Dixon said.
"Media is a consumer-oriented business, and two-thirds of the economy is consumer spending," Sanders Morris Harris analyst David Miller said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average -- which numbers Disney among its 30 component stocks -- rose 378.28 (4.8%) to 8,255.68. The blue-chip index has restored 970 points over the past four market days after seemingly endless downticks in previous trading seshes.
The technology-laden Nasdaq climbed 61.89 (5.1%) to 1,282.42.
