Welcome to Thoughts on the Market.

I'm Benjamin Swinburne, Equity Analyst covering media, entertainment, advertising, and the

cable satellite industries.

Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about the

road ahead for media and entertainment in 2021.

It's Tuesday, February 23rd at 11 a.m. in New York.

When I get questions about the industries I cover, there's naturally a lot of discussion

and focus on disruption.

But despite all the attention on disruption, media and entertainment is also a very cyclical

business, meaning the stock performance of these companies often has a direct relationship

to the health of the economy.

From that perspective, 2021 looks like a year of top-line strength as the health of the

global economy improves and we begin to emerge from the shadow of COVID.

Before looking ahead, it's worth taking a moment to look back at 2020, since COVID had

a tremendous impact on pretty much every company we cover.

Much of the world was locked down in their homes, streaming movies and music, reading

and watching news, more eyeballs on digital advertising, and so on.

But we were also in our homes, so theme parks took a hit, outdoor advertising, movie theaters,

so some profound impacts.

As a result last year, the best performing stocks in media and entertainment were up over

100% year on year, and the worst performing stocks were down over 50% year on year.

So moving forward, some opportunities may lie with companies where the market may have

...