Methinks the moguls doth protest too much.

In the midst of a horrible week on Wall Street, CNBC took a run at the media stocks and gathered some word from around the sector.  Naturally, everyone was upbeat…but how much of their optimism is warranted, and how much of it is double-talk?  Let’s take a look!

Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference in New York, DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg said, “Both traditionally as well as recently, we have seen that our product is, at worse, recession-resistant and, more optimistically and historically, has actually been recession-proof.”

Meanwhile Boss Spielberg can’t wrangle the money to make Tintin.  Sounds like a little weaselspeak from Katzenberg, whose company is carrying an ambivalent 2.5 on a five-scale from analysts.  However, you’ve got to give him credit as Dreamworks is trading at about the fifty-two week high right now.

Similarly Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said that about 75 percent of his company’s revenue comes from sales of content, including movie and TV productions, and cable and magazine subscriptions that “for decades have not been particularly sensitive” to economic turbulence. The other 25 percent comes from advertising — but that, too, he said, has remained strong during the current downturn.

Oh come ON!  Your company is staring at its fifty two week LOW and you’re selling us a bill of goods about how STRONG your picture is?  Okay, granted, Time Warner cable isn’t doing half bad and isn’t likely to get disconnected especially with the digital switch coming up.  But you’ve got a whole lot of other pies going and a lot of them are burning.  And for you to say that advertising has remained strong is ludicrous.  You know DAMN well those dollars are locked in for the rest of the year!

You’re not going to see just how bad things get until 2009.

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch said that Fox Broadcasting has shown particularly strong growth in ad sales and that several of his cable networks are showing solid profitability for the first time. (He acknowledged that his 20th Century Fox studio “had a bad summer” but “great films” will be coming later in the year.) “Hard times are good for big companies,” he remarked.

Again, strong growth in ad sales NOW.  The dollars have already been allocated–it’s 2009 that’ll show the problems.   And considering you’re also staring at a fifty-two-week low isn’t an encouraging sign, Rupert.

Oh…and “had a bad summer” doesn’t BEGIN to describe it.

And CBS Chairman Les Moonves suggested that, although advertising from auto makers and financial institutions will be down this year, it will be more than offset by political ad sales. Even as the media moguls were speaking, their stock was being hit hard, with CBS and News Corp hitting new 52-week lows.

And the final splat from embalmed network CBS rings in as Moonves bleats that all is well!  Yes, advertising on his network will be down this year, but political advertising will make up the slack!  Even though the election’s forty-odd days away and you’ll lose all that income directly.  Considering how close that fifty-two-week low is, Les, you’d better figure out a way to make MORE before your network is shot.

The rundown looks pretty bad for the media companies, no matter how loud they protest to the contrary.  Hard numbers stare bleakly at their rose-colored pronouncements, and the results don’t look good.  Big media may not be as recession-proof as it once thought.

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