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The key difference that the UK enjoys is a vigorous wholesale market with millions choosing to use virtual operators (MVNOs) like Lebara, Tesco and Sky. Cumulatively this adds up to a bigger operator than Three. These virtual operators are better off with three strong networks providing wholesale, rather than four, reckons Enders Analysis.

“There is not a big licensing opportunity. I don’t think the aim of [the ai models] is to provide alternatives to news,” says Alice Enders of Enders Analysis, a media-research firm.

Record numbers of young viewers are switching off traditional television in favour of short-form content, according to the media regulator, Ofcom, with Enders Analysis suggesting a 30% decline in 16- to 34-year-olds watching TV shows with their parents over the last 10 years.

“[MFE] want to buy it and they will want to buy on the best possible terms,” said François Godard, an analyst at Enders covering European broadcasters. “Their approach now is just showing this, it’s brinkmanship.”

The precise form of the scheme that will be chosen remains to be specified, as some analysts, such as François Godard at the British firm Enders Analysis, imagine the creation of a local entity that would be listed in the country. In any case, the pay-TV channel confirmed its intention to maintain a listing in Johannesburg, "so that South African investors can benefit from the future growth of the company," the statement said.

“It is in decline,” said Tom Harrington, the head of television at the research firm Enders Analysis. “Viewership numbers are pushed up by older people, who only watch broadcast television, and watch a lot of it.”

That decline is not the whole picture, though, Harrington said. “People still spend more time watching linear television than they spend doing anything else, except sleep and work,” he said. “It still commands an enormous amount of attention.”

The greater change, Harrington said, was in the “communality” of the experience: We consume more content than ever, but we tend to do it on our own. That means there is less overlap between what young people watch and what older generations do. “Those touch points have been lost,” he said. “And that means there is a lack of common culture, which is a little bit sad.”