Anyone remember that scene from Gremlins 2: The New Batch where the Brain Gremlin seizes control of the brokerage house along with some of his buddies and starts taking calls?  “It’s RAWTHER brutal here,” he says with a small smile, “In fact, we’re advising our clients to put everything they’ve got into canned food and shotguns.”

Frankly, if you own stock in major media outlets like Disney, Time Warner or Viacom, you should be thinking about diversifying your portfolio into Remington and Clam Chowder too.  Check out the word on the Wall Street:

Warning that “content may no longer be kind in the entertainment business,” Lehman Bros. cut the stock ratings of the top entertainment companies Monday while warning that the Internet and digital devices could fragmentize the media. In a research note, Lehman Bros. analyst Anthony Diclemente warned that “structural changes” in the way entertainment is delivered to the public were likely to “impact the core revenue and profits of the entertainment business. The media companies singled out by Diclemente, Disney, Time Warner, CBS, and Viacom all saw their shares drop, with CBS’s shares plummeting the most — 4.5 percent to $17.77. Diclemente predicted they would drop still further, to $16.00.

Now, this is horrible news.  Downright horrible.  Especially if you’ve got stock in media companies.  But it’s coming on the heels of lots of other horrible news like advertisers are pulling cash out of network television and to a lesser extent out of cable, plus the revelation that Liz already described about how TV audiences are graying whilst the kids are on the Internet.

Frankly, I say Lehman’s actually a bit behind.  COULD fragmentize hell–it’s already happened.  The move to the internet is on–the kids aren’t watching Still Standing or Two and a Half Men, no! They’re watching some moron launch himself off a ramp into the side of his house on YouTube.  Viacom, of course, is handling this in true Viacom fashion by suing YouTube.

This will probably do little to save Viacom unless it starts making some smart moves now.  But this is the kind of thing I’ve been talking about for some time.  More and more, consumers are coming home for their entertainment choices and relying more on the internet.  Monolithic networks aren’t providing what the people want any more, which is no longer cheesy sitcoms or reality TV. People want what they want when they want it, and they’re looking to the internet first.

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