Enders News

Caspar Stewart was quoted in an article on Sky viewing figures for the Premier League. Sky has drawn an average of 819,000 TV viewers per match since the season began in August, up 8 percent over a year earlier, according to data compiled by Enders Analysis. Changes in viewing behavior are causing broadcasters to focus more on social media and selling access to apps and single game passes to spur interest, rather than restricting content to monthly TV subscribers. On Thursday, Sky reported a 12 percent rise in pay-as-you-go sports and entertainment purchases in its fiscal first quarter. Caspar said that the Premier League’s encouraging early figures might indicate that recent attempts to crack down on piracy are having an impact. Adding that “they always tend to bring in the biggest audiences”.

Alice Enders was quoted in an article on Sky, which is facing pressure from a prominent business lobby group to remove James Murdoch as chairman if a majority of independent shareholders oppose his leadership at the U.K. pay-TV provider’s annual meeting on Thursday. The Murdoch family, led by 86-year-old billionaire Rupert Murdoch, is already facing questions about its oversight of the Fox News network in the U.S. and its newspapers in the U.K. On Thursday, the focus will be on their handling of the bid itself, which came in December 2016, only months after James Murdoch resumed the role of Sky chairman. Alice said “this is a skirmish that crops up time and time again. I’m a little less convinced. This is a family that owns basically 40 percent of this company and it’s a little hard to insist that there not be a family member involved in the management.”

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on the magazine world, where even the most prestigious titles have been challenged by the never-ending penetration of the internet and its abundance of free news and entertainment. With circulation and advertising revenues under pressure on both sides of the Atlantic magazines are facing an increasingly uncertain future. In fact, Magna Global, a media buying agency, expects magazines’ global advertising revenues to fall 13 per cent this year, while Enders Analysis, a media research group, has warned that the consumer magazine market was reaching “an existential threshold”. Douglas said “the industry is shrinking, and the decline seems to be accelerating both in circulation and in advertising — for print and online”. In the longer term, magazine publishers still have to work out what to do about the internet. He added “the way print advertising always worked was advertisers would pay for a magazine’s audience but also for the environment and the context”, but online magazines “have nothing like the same context and resonance” because a reader might stumble across an article on Facebook or Twitter and then immediately go somewhere else. Publishers, he says, have been “chasing a myth about digital advertising. In print they might have 100,000 readers while online they can get 10m. But that’s irrelevant because the 100,000 are the right 100,000 and more valuable”. Online advertising rates continue to lag print rates at their peak so in chasing large online readerships, magazines have “diluted the very essence of their brand . . . they have lost sight of what audience targeting really means”.

Joseph Evans was quoted in an article on London's transport authority TfL decision not to renew Uber's licence to operate in the city of London. In the 48 hours following the decision, Addison Lee, Gett and MyTaxi all saw a spike in downloads. Some rival car-booking services had tried to capitalise on the news by offering steep discounts over the weekend, even though Uber's service will continue to operate as usual while it appeals against the TfL decision. Figures from app research company Priori Data also indicated a boost for Uber's rivals. Joseph said "the small-scale effect last weekend shows that TfL's decision is creating awareness of alternatives. Given Uber's position as the best-known ride-hailing brand, even this is something they would rather have avoided. But the point remains that from a taxi-app perspective, Uber is the 800lb gorilla in the UK".

Tom Harrington was quoted in an article on the contrasting performances of Strictly and the X Factor, which have raised questions about whether the ITV show has fallen into terminal decline despite creator Simon Cowell attempting to shake it up this year. Tom said singing contests had become “stale” and questioned whether ITV would continue to put the X Factor up against Strictly. He said “shows are often moved around, including by the BBC, which sits on top of the channel listing but doesn’t have everything its own way – it moved The Big Family Cooking Showdown, so as not to clash with Bake Off on Channel 4, and it brought forward Poldark so as not to share a Sunday night again with ITV’s Victoria. Strictly and X Factor have been going head to head in some capacity for years and, up to this time, that consistency indicates that for both the BBC and ITV that arrangement works. That may change, however, with X Factor’s decline”. Tom added that despite the X Factor’s falling audience it remained valuable to ITV. The programme reaches more 16- to 34-year-olds than Strictly – a valuable market for advertisers – and its viewing figures are expected to rise significantly when people watching the X Factor on catch-up services or recordings are taken into account. He said “X Factor has been slipping since the heights of the late 2000s when the discovery of acts like Matt Cardle and Little Mix resonated with viewers. Singing contests have inevitably grown somewhat stale, a trend hurried along by the sheer number of them – in the past year, BBC has announced that neither Pitch Battle nor Garry Barlow’s Let It Shine will return for a second season. That being said, even as it stands X Factor remains a guaranteed pull for a sizeable audience, and one that is relatively young. It is important to note that on Saturday, X Factor was markedly more popular amongst the 16 to 34s than Strictly”.

François Godard was quoted in an article on HBO España, which has commissioned Alea Media to develop an original adaption of Fernando Aramburu’s bestselling novel “Patria”. Confirmation of the project comes after months of speculation over HBO’s Spanish production plans. Last November, HBO España launched a standalone streaming service in Spain and hired Miguel Salvat, a highly respected former director of content at Canal Plus and of premium channels at Movistar, as its commissioning editor of original programming. Francois said that HBO España’s production strategy is likely to be similar to that of HBO in the U.S. – namely, to “deliver limited, high-selective and unique content, the best of which may turn out to be iconic to its brand”.

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on Trinity Mirror, which owns the Daily and Sunday Mirror, announcement that it was in talks to buy the papers belonging to the Northern & Shell group, comprising the Daily Express, Daily Star and their Sunday sister titles. The two groups have been in on-off talks for two years. The sale would mark the biggest upheaval in the newspaper market for a decade, and the latest consolidation in a shrinking industry. Northern & Shell’s owner, Richard Desmond, a flamboyant former porn-baron who plays drums in a band with Roger Daltrey of The Who, bought the newspaper titles in 2000 (except the Daily Star Sunday, which he launched two years later). The Daily Express has lost about two-thirds of its readers since Mr Desmond bought it, as has the Sunday Express; the Daily Star has held up a bit better. Douglas believes that Mr Desmond has decided that in a declining market he has made as much money out of the papers as he can.

Claire Enders was quoted in an article on the announcement by Karen Bradley, the UK culture secretary, on the Sky/Fox bid. Ms Bradley said that she was minded to widen a referral to regulators about the £11.7bn deal, to include scrutiny of corporate governance controls at Fox News. Ms Bradley raised new concerns about the transaction, overruling a recommendation from Ofcom, the media watchdog, that regulators consider only the deal’s impact on the UK media market. Claire said “Ofcom hasn’t changed its mind. “There is no new news, but the secretary of state has decided to go for the safest option to protect her from a judicial review. This shows the government just needs a quiet time”.

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on the Express, once the best-selling newspaper in the world, which could be heading for new ownership. On Friday, Trinity Mirror, publisher of the Daily and Sunday Mirror, as well as 150 local UK titles, said it was in exclusive talks to acquire the Express and Star newspapers, along with the magazine assets owned by Mr Desmond’s parent company, Northern and Shell. Although both sides stressed that a deal is still some way off, Trinity’s renewed interest — the two sides tried but failed to clinch a deal back in 2015 — presents Mr Desmond, 65, with the opportunity to bail out of the rapidly shrinking newspaper business. Throughout Mr Desmond’s time in charge, the Express group has posted healthy profits. But during his ownership, the daily newspaper has been eclipsed by rival the Daily Mail, with circulation falling from more than 1m at the time of Mr Desmond’s takeover in 2000, to just below 400,000 today. Douglas said “every publisher has had to make cuts over the past few years. But the Express group has been more ruthless than most”.