Viacom could go the way of film developing, a prominent industry watcher charged Wednesday.

Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger’s report — “Is Viacom the Next Eastman Kodak?” — said the disturbing comparison referred to “once dominant companies where the product that provides the majority of their profits (film; TV networks) is made obsolete by a digital world.”

These shifts forced Kodak into bankruptcy in January 2012. And though the analyst admitted it could be years before Viacom suffers the same fate, he insisted a “perpetual negative cycle” toward that end is in play already.

“Audiences decline, causing ad revenue to decline, putting distribution at risk and pressuring content investment, which causes audiences to decline, and so forth,” Juenger said.

Viacom is vulnerable in that many of its networks, including MTV, Nickelodeon and Spike, target youngsters — “the segment of the population that’s most rapidly and definitively abandoning linear TV,” according to the analyst.

Smaller audiences mean fewer ad dollars. With Viacom, however, an audience decline that Juenger put in the neighborhood of 25 percent for the first half-year made ad revenue shrink a mere 6 percent and 5 percent in the last two quarters.

The biggest swipe at management, though, was Juenger’s claim that the alleged death rattle could have been averted had Viacom spent the $14.5 billion devoted to share buybacks since January 2011 on assets to prepare the company for change. “Instead, with that cash, they could have acquired some combination of: Lionsgate, Starz, AMC Networks, and/or a handful of [YouTube-affiliated channels] such as Maker Studios,” he said.