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DMG Media, the owner of brands including Daily Mail Online and Metro, has complained about AI overviews leading to a drop in referrals to its websites of 89 per cent. The publisher told the Competition and Markets Authority that Google’s summaries were “carefully constructed” to ensure “the user has no reason to read any further” than the search page. Meanwhile, Enders Analysis, the research group, has warned publishers that “search traffic is no longer a given” in the age of artificial intelligence.

Claire Enders, of Enders Analysis, describes the break-up idea as a “non-starter”. In a report last year, analysts at Enders branded a subscription model “antithetical to the BBC’s public service mission, necessarily ending universality of access and undermining its breadth of content”.

François Godard, senior analyst at consulting firm Enders, explains: "The future of Eurosport without the backing of a major streaming platform or a global group like Warner seems difficult to me. Eurosport, despite its name, has always been a network of national channels that are quite different from each other (Eurosport Germany is very different from Eurosport Italy), even if they are united by some important rights, such as the Olympics. I would bet on Eurosport being sold piecemeal to national operators. In Italy, for example, Discovery is potentially of interest to Sky Italia."

Claire Holubowskyj, at Enders Analysis, said many issues had been 'brewing for quite some time' and the arrival of a new chief executive hadn't resulted in a 'material step change'.

She said: 'Rose needs time to get going, but the business does not necessarily have lots of time to give her as the results have been so negative for a while.'

She added that with AI taking a dominant role it was 'unsurprising' creative staff were getting 'jittery' about the future.

'If that's the new direction, they will be worrying about what that means for the traditional model of creatives driving well-thought-out ad campaigns.'

"It is Ted Sarandos who is behind Netflix's original creations - which initially tended to make acquisitions - and behind the fact of offering a whole series allowing binge watching," emphasizes François Godard, analyst at the firm Enders Analysis.

Even if it's not without risk. "He'll have to prove that there won't be any destruction of value with an acquisition of this size," François Godard reiterated. A challenge, especially since the CEO himself pointed out in October, during a conference call with analysts, that Netflix had grown without mega-acquisitions. Until now.

The lukewarm reception may not actually matter. "The main purpose of Prime (alongside peripheral things like making the overall Prime subscription even more stickier for consumers) is to sell third-party video subscriptions and rent films – original Prime content is a hook to get viewers there in the first place," explains Tom Harrington of media researchers Enders Analysis