British media stocks take a dive

Amid increasingly gloomy forecasts for ad-supported media, shares in the British ITV company Carlton Communications dropped to an eight-year low Thursday while shares in cable companies NTL and Telewest hit all-time lows. In an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, NTL managing director Stephen Carter said that the company’s revenue and customer base is virtually unchanged from last year. The only thing that has changed, he observed, is the share price. “There is excessive pessimism out there,” he remarked. Meanwhile, the London Times reported that executives at Granada, another ITV company, are miffed that during the current period of retrenchment, company accountants no longer allow the free bowl of fruit that the execs once received in their offices each morning, but do permit the company to retain a corporate jet. One executive told the Times: “We can’t have a free banana but we might still get free flights.”