If broadcast TV is doing well, what happened to its stock prices?

Broadcast TV is apparently doing well compared to most other media. That is probably because it can still deliver tens of millions of people in one place and at one time. Marketers with products that sell nationwide and across fairly wide demographics cannot get that breadth of audience anywhere else.

According to The New York Times, "despite the continued fragmentation of national television viewing, the power of the broadcast networks to reach mass audiences on a nightly basis continued to give them an edge over other media."

That logic appears to have been missed by investors. CBS (NYSE:CBS), the biggest market "pure play" in broadcast TV is down over 70% during that last year. Contrast that to Time Warner (NYSE:TWX), which has no national broadcast network. Its shares are only off 40% for the same period.

Disney's (NYSE:DIS) reputation on Wall St. has little to do with its ownership of ABC. Investors like its ESPN cable network and its theme parks. ABC's numbers are often viewed as a drag on Disney's value.

NBC, which is part of the entertainment arm of GE (NYSE:GE), is routinely mentioned as a bad match for the rest of the conglomerate's business. Analysts often point to the fact that GE's value would be helped if it jettisoned the operation. It does not have the margins or growth potential of GE's huge infrastructure division.

If networks are doing so well, shareholders did not get the memo.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.