The Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) Company has been playing the role of Wall Street darling but not today. The company still turned a profit but not what analysts were expecting—although it did beat revenue estimates with $9.4 billion for the quarter ending Sept. 27, up 6 percent from $8.9 billion year over year. The profit of $760 million was down 14 percent from $883 million in FYQ407, for earnings per share of $.40, down from $.44 last year. Excluding special items, it would have been $.43 per share. The company was hit by the fall of Lehman, taking a $91 million bad debt charge. Via Marketwatch, the FactSet Research analyst estimate was a profit of 49 cents a share on sales of $9.31 billion. We’ll have more color as the call gets underway but the overarching theme so far matches the rest of the media universe as the economic downtown takes its toll.

—Internet Group: No specifics here, but the savings at the group helped offset the lower advertising revenue for broadcasting. The “improvement” was attributed to “decreased costs for the Disney-branded mobile phone service, which was shut down during the first quarter of the current year” but those were in turn “partially offset by higher costs related to international mobile and on-line operations and our Disney.com website.” Digital revenue also helped the ABC Television Network stay even with last year. 

Earnings release | Webcast (4:30 PM ET) | Transcript (via Seeking Alpha)

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