Say what you want about the benefits of synergies and size for big media companies; for their shareholders, the bigger the company, the smaller the gains.

Between last week and the same week a year ago, Time Warner shares were down 50 percent; Viacom was off 59 percent; G.E. had fallen 46 percent; News Corp. slid 65 percent; and Disney, the big winner, had tumbled a mere 34 percent.

Is it time to say "Enough already" with big media and the dead-as-disco idea Japanese giants such as Sony had about buying movie studios to sell their VCRs?

How about small media? Or at least smaller media?

It sounds fairly logical. The supposed "synergies" between the divisions of modern conglomerates like Viacom, G.E., and Time Warner have never really blossomed. Time Warner's magazine group, cable networks, AOL, pay TV, and movie-studio divisions barely communicate, let alone work together. And if that lumping together doesn't deliver value in the stock market, why suffer through it?

Time Warner took one step toward unraveling those holdings last spring, with the spinoff of Time Warner Cable, which delivered shareholders over $10 per share in dividends. Before that move, long-awaited by analysts, the cable unit's success was never reflected in the larger company's share price.

AOL, by contrast, has had a disproportionately negative affect on the company's stock, leaving many investors wondering when a sale of the unit—or of the floundering magazine unit—will take place.

That's a tough break for the company's better-performing assets, like Turner Broadcasting, home to cable hits like The Closer, and  stellar studio Warner Bros., responsible for summer smashes like Sex and the City and The Dark Knight. Spun off independently, any of these properties could deliver substantial value to shareholders. As it is, the albatross of AOL is the only thing visible to anyone looking at Time Warner's stock price.

CBS is a similar story. Last week, it put Showtime content front and center in a new partnership with YouTube, offering the channel's most recent series premieres of Dexter and Californication to viewers for free.

In doing so, the company, whose share price was down 72 percent from a year ago last week, is trying to capitalize on its marquee pay-TV brand to bring viewers and media attention to its shows online, where it will take in revenue from ads played at the start, middle, and end of its shows.  

But could CBS unlock the value of its increasingly shiny Showtime brand by spinning off the network into its own independent entity?