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Francois said “Discovery, about to merge with Warner, is one of the most powerful content operators in the world, so if it were to increase substantially its commitment to the UK sports TV market, it would look like a long-term, credible commitment. By contrast DAZN’s prospects are more fuzzy."

While Francois predicts the potential joint venture would not push sports rights costs up, owing to Eurosport and JV’s historically cautious approach to rights, he argues that the deal would “confirm the fragmentation trend where consumers need to subscribe to a range of services to watch their favourite sports – Sky, BT Sport, Amazon, Eurosport.”

“It rises the value of aggregation by operators likes Sky or Virgin, telling viewers “you find everything here in one place."

Claire said “It started a generation ago." She believes that the prime mover of Rothermere’s strategy is the man who has been the company’s CEO since 2016, Paul Zwillenberg. Rothermere first met Zwillenberg at Duke University, where they were both students in the 1980s.

Abi said that the move is “no surprise. It is nudging the institutional investors.”

Julian said “For advertisers, reaching a mass audience simultaneously is key, which linear TV is set up perfectly to do”. He cited the popularity of shows like Strictly Come Dancing and the Great British Bake Off as signalling the ongoing relevance of  traditional broadcast for adverts."

Tom said the channel is still some way off attracting the kind of viewers needed to cover costs. "GB News had a big night on November 22, averaging 119,000 between 6pm and 10pm,  which was on par with peak viewing levels of the first two nights after the launch - although it's not particularly clear why this night was comparatively so big. But other than that night the channel has been oscillating between 10,000 and 25,000 average viewing across the full day, for the past four months or so."

He added "This falls well short of the amount of viewing that the channel would need to break even on the cost base outlined at launch, but the main purpose of news outlets can often be removed from the pursuit of profit. Due to sizeable promotion I would imagine that the Trump interview will pull in similar viewing levels to launch, but I doubt it will resonate much beyond tonight in terms of an ongoing viewing boost." 

Douglas said “The initiative is eminently sensible and should be embraced by every quality news and content provider out there. The internet has demolished incentives for originating content. Exclusive is illusive — for as long as it takes someone to re-write and publish. Copyright is the real key, but no one seriously believes online norms can be reversed after more than 20 years.”

James said yesterday that BT had “not been looked at historically on a five-to-ten-year horizon, but on a one, two, three-year [one]”.

James said "At some point in the future they will get a return, but that point in the future is sufficiently far ahead - beyond 2026 - which is beyond the normal time horizon of a traditional BT investment. It poses an obvious question: 'Given all the interest in infrastructure assets is there a type of investor that would be more suited to this?"

He added "When it comes to timing, if it looks like one party is going to make a bid, and you are potentially interested, that is when you get ready to make a bid. If a company is seen as in-play that promotes interest from others who might not be making the initial push."