Lower NFL Broadcast Ratings Seen Hurting CBS the Most
Falling television ratings for National Football League games may hurt CBS Corp. more than its broadcast peers, according to John Janedis, a Jefferies Group LLC analyst. Janedis estimated the effect of a 10 percent shortfall in NFL-related advertising revenue – in line with the drop in ratings for the first three weeks of the season – on TV-network owners’ fourth-quarter earnings in a report Thursday. He predicted that CBS’s profit would decline by 6 cents a share, compared with just 1 cent at Twenty-First Century Fox Inc.; Comcast Corp., owner of the NBC network, and Walt Disney Co., owner of ESPN.