More Predictions

Merrill’s Jessica Reif Cohen hopped on the mobility bandwagon, though she thinks "the business impact is likely to be more significant in ’07 and beyond." For Cohen next year will be all about online, and "traditional media companies are poorly equipped to compete for online advertising dollars." She expects a strong year for MSOs, "as the RBOCs struggle to roll out their video products on a meaningful scale [and] DBS continues to suffer from unfavorable comparisons vs cable owing to a lack of a bundled offering and true video interactivity." Her ’06 stock picks: News Corp and Viacom; avoid Discovery and Warner Music. — Even if cable operators bat back multicast must-carry bills in Congress, "local TV broadcasters [will] increasingly attempt to extract additional revenue from cable operators, through increased "cash-for-carriage" demands for retrans," S&P says. That will hit small-to-mid-size ops, like Mediacom, Insight and Cable One, it predicts.