
Another drop for stocks on Friday has pushed the S&P 500 index 20 percent below its peak set early this year. The benchmark index was down 2% for the day in early afternoon trading and on pace for its seventh straight losing week.

Stocks are wavering between small gains and losses on Wall Street Friday, and are still barely higher for the week. The weak showing follows a two-day rally that helped erase a slump earlier in the week.

It was a feeble ending to an up-and-down week of trading. The S&P 500 index lost 0.9%. The benchmark index had its second straight weekly loss. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.5% and the Nasdaq fell 0.9%.
Analysts pressed the company Tuesday for more information about certain elements of the merged owners of the CBS broadcast network; Showtime pay-cable channel; Paramount movie studio and Nickelodeon kids-media empire.
This was the year Wall Street discovered cord-cutting. Media stocks are headed for their first annual decline since 2008 as investors get increasingly wary of the growing number of Americans who drop traditional pay-TV packages, threatening the business model of an entire industry — from cable providers to program producers.