Shares of CBS (NYSE: CBS) are no longer rolling around in the pits of equity hell. Do you recall when they were trading around $3 per share? Nasty time it was. Amazingly, as I write this, CBS is hovering near a 52-week high. They are well over $12 in value.

Yet, when I look at the latest earnings report, I don't feel as upbeat as the market. According to the press release (the link goes to a .pdf file), revenues were flat for the third quarter and adjusted income dropped to 25 cents per share from the year-ago figure of 39 cents per share.

News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), the big media conglomerate that competes with Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, issued Q1 data on Wednesday after regular trading was over. Revenues declined 4%, but earnings per share went up 10% to 22 cents. According to Bloomberg, that was enough to beat analysts by four pennies.

That's pretty decent for the company, but there are a couple of spots in need of serious help. It goes without saying that the newspaper industry is having a rough time, so it's not so hard to understand why the news groups experienced a significant decline in operating income.

Viacom (NYSE: VIA), a content player in competition with News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Sony (NYSE: SNE), and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, issued Q3 numbers today. If we had a different market on our hands, I think the stock would have reacted better to the news. Revenues were down 3%, but adjusted income rose 25% to 69 cents per share. According to Bloomberg, the bottom line came in well ahead of estimates, which were pegged at 57 cents per share.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, the company's A shares are down slightly as I write this by about 0.6%, and the B shares are just about flat. Like I say, if the broader indexes were in an uptrend this afternoon, we probably would have seen a pop in the stock.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the advertising market could be ready for an upswing. Michael Morris, an analyst at UBS, is making a connection between improved sales at retail stores and a robust environment for commercials and the like. His reasoning is sound: if retail businesses are doing better, then they might want want to take advantage of new cash levels to invest in marketing initiatives aimed at bringing in traffic.

Indeed, the advertising industry has been in the dumps. Any good news is welcome. Media entities such as Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Viacom (NYSE: VIA), CBS (NYSE: CBS), News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, are counting on increased opportunities to sell their respective inventories at better prices.

The movie-going public was in the mood to see a classic Hollywood horror archetype over the weekend: zombies. Yep, the walking dead, made popular by George Romero so many years ago, were feasting in darkened theaters across the country. According to Box Office Mojo estimates available at the time of this writing, Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Zombieland made the most money at domestic theaters over the past weekend, taking in $25 million.

Sony also captured second place with its computer cartoon, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. That film is on its way to a total haul of over $100 million. At the moment, it has better than $80 million in the bank. Shareholders of Disney (NYSE: DIS), however, had their own computer cartoons in the marketplace as well. The double feature of Pixar's Toy Story and Toy Story 2 came in third with $12 million. To be honest, I thought the idea of running those two back-to-back would be too much to take for the attention spans of the younger crowd. I know it would be way too much for me to take.

Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) is feeling a little heat from studios Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal. The major media companies would all like to make more money from Netflix's business model, according to BusinessWeek.

No one is really satisfied these days with the DVD industry. Growth in home video is no longer what it used to be. So content makers perceive a need to engage new strategies to offset the this lack of expansion. It would be nice if those strategies were confined to innovation in movie development and the reduction of project budgets. Instead, trying to negotiate more beneficial deals with distributors such as Netflix will probably be the focus of media execs.

Sony (NYSE: SNE) had a tasty weekend. The studio's new computer-generated cartoon, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, finished the box-office race in first place. According to Boxofficemojo, Meatballs (and I am only shortening the title to Meatballs because, from what I've seen, most media outlets are using this standard; as far as I'm concerned, the movie should be shortened to Cloudy so as to avoid confusion with the classic Bill Murray comedy), made $30 million at domestic theaters as of early estimates. Don't worry, though; even if the estimates come in a little lighter than expected, Sony is going to remain top dog.

That's because the next two films on the chart are each credited with around $10 million. Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) The Informant! and Lionsgate's (NYSE: LGF) Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself settled into the second and third spots, respectively. These two could conceivably change places once final stats are delivered to analysts.

I read a surprising article over at Boxofficemojo by Brandon Gray. The author highlighted the foreign financial performance of News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) computer-animated cartoon Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the third entry in the popular franchise. Amazingly, Dinosaurs has now grossed $667 million at theaters outside the domestic market.

What's so interesting about that? Well, it means that the project now occupies third place on the all-time foreign chart. Gray says the number-one film on this chart is Titanic, which was a co-production between News Corp. and Viacom (NYSE: VIA). Coming in second is Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Last year, I composed a not-so-bullish appraisal of NBC Universal's Jay Leno strategy. NBC Universal, which General Electric (NYSE: GE) has an 80% stake in, wanted to make sure that Leno's services did not wind up in the hands of a competing media entity when they handed The Tonight Show over to Conan O'Brien, so they bestowed upon him a talk program to be aired weeknights at 10 PM. It debuts tonight. I basically argued that NBC would survive without Leno, and that such an odd programming choice at 10 PM, when scripted intellectual assets are usually broadcast, might not be the optimal paradigm to engage.

Well, I still feel this is a risky move, but I do have to say that an article by Scott Collins over at the Los Angeles Times has piqued my interest in the expected economical benefit that Leno-at-10 might imply. Leno might not bring in a ton of eyeballs, but his profit margin could be acceptable given the lower capital necessary to fund his extravaganza.

It was a big weekend for Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF). The company had a Tyler Perry picture in the multiplex marketplace. As shareholders know, the talented writer/producer/director has a lot of brand equity with moviegoers. About a year ago, Lionsgate was doing relatively well with Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys. That project opened in second place.

This year, Perry has done even better. Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself debuted in the top spot at domestic theaters as of early estimates at Boxofficemojo. Its three-day gross was roughly $24 million. It had some stiff competition. Coming in second was the animated sci-fi piece 9 from Focus Features, which is owned by General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal. Inglourious Basterds, distributed by The Weinsten Company, was third (the Quentin Tarantino flick has now gone beyond $100 million in total gross). News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) All About Steve came in at number four. Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) The Final Destination appears to be losing steam, as it dropped to the fifth slot on the chart.

Speaking of horror, Sorority Row from Summit Entertainment came in sixth. I thought this movie was going to rank much higher, but I was wrong. The marketing campaign looked good to me, but it apparently didn't fully resonate with the intended audience (perhaps a large amount of that audience decided to opt for Destination instead).

Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) was tops at the multiplex yet again with a scary horror franchise that the teens seem to be enjoying. The Final Destination, according to Boxofficemojo, grossed $12 million at domestic theaters over the three-day weekend, as of early estimates available at the time of this writing. I'm sure Destination will retain its number-one status once Labor Day is figured into the equation.

All About Steve, from News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), was the second-place film. It actually came close to Destination's take, bringing in about $11 million. Inglourious Basterds, distributed by The Weinstein Company, was third, and Gamer, an interesting sci-fi flick courtesy of Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF), was fourth. Sony's (NYSE: SNE) District 9, which came in fifth, has now gone beyond $100 million in total take.

Monday, August 31, 2009, will go down as one strange trading day. Disney (NYSE: DIS) buys Marvel (NYSE: MVL). BloggingStocks reported the details of the deal here.

As a long-time shareholder of Disney, I have to ask: Does CEO Bob Iger know what the heck he's doing anymore? I thought the news was quite surreal. I suppose we all knew that Marvel would be a takeover target someday but, honestly, I thought some other media conglomerate, like maybe News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), would do a deal before the Mouse would.

CBS (NYSE: CBS), the famous broadcaster that competes with Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC, News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) Fox, and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC, reported Q2 earnings on Thursday after the bell. If you judged the performance solely by the profit drop, you would have no choice but to feel sorry for CBS. The media company made an adjusted 8 cents per share. Last year at this time, CBS pulled in an adjusted 49 cents per share.

But the market looked past the significant income decline and instead seemed to focus on the fact that management beat Wall Street's expectations by a penny, according to Earnings.com estimates. Shares of CBS were up over 7% during yesterday's after-hours session.

News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), a media company that competes with Disney (NYSE: DIS), General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, Sony (NYSE: SNE), CBS (NYSE: CBS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), and Viacom (NYSE: VIA), reported Q4 earnings on Wednesday after the bell. They were unimpressive. Revenues decreased almost 11%. On a reported basis, the company lost 8 cents per share, compared to a profit of 43 cents per share in the year-ago period. That is a depressing drop, but on an adjusted basis, News Corp. made 19 cents per share, which, according to Bloomberg, was a single penny ahead of expectations.

The company's problems with MySpace always make the news these days. Technically, the site is a part of Fox Interactive Media, and it is that division of NWS which took on charges that helped to drive the GAAP loss. Remember when MySpace was so important to shareholder value? Not any more. Facebook and Twitter have now taken all the buzz, and News Corp. just isn't having a fun time with this investment. This is one area that management obviously has to work on.

DreamWorks Animation (NYSE: DWA), a studio that battles against Disney (NYSE: DIS), News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), and Sony (NYSE: SNE) in the highly competitive world of computer-generated cartoons, published its second-quarter earnings earlier in the week. They didn't scream to the world "we're a growth company!", but looks might be deceiving. The company seems to be doing fine, and you most likely would do well to take a long-term approach with this business.

Earnings came in at 30 cents per share. You probably won't like that earnings were 30 cents per share in the year-ago period as well. Agreed: 0% growth doesn't give a shareholder a whole lot to jump up and down about. Thing is, though, that DreamWorks Animation basically wants to hold its own until the next big catalyst. The home-video release of the studio's latest theatrical production, Monsters vs. Aliens, is slated for release in the early fall. So, from that point of view, maybe we can cut the company some slack.