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In 2003, the Competition Commission imposed the CRR remedy as a condition of the proposed merger of Carlton and Granada to allay advertiser fears that the new ITV plc would use its market power to leverage higher airtime prices on ITV1 CRR made it possible to stop the ITV1 premium from rising and yet the ITV1 premium has risen almost without a blip since 2003. This note asks why The answer it seems has less to do with the negotiating muscle of ITV Sales than with the enduring USP and relative inelasticity of demand for ITV1 airtime and demand elasticity for the rest, while CRR has become increasingly irrelevant

The phone hacking scandal showed the necessary ingredients for journalistic abuses to occur. In a world of online news, greater commercial pressures mean that, if anything, they will increase

The internet will also diminish plurality among major news providers and make abuses harder to correct, increasing the need to prevent them in the first place

It is often argued that attempts to regulate the internet will either fail or be actively harmful. We argue that regulation focused on major online news providers could be a limited success

Last month saw the fourth release of NRS PADD, a fusion of NRS and comScore data, which provides the first industry-wide, cross-platform (print and PC) data set on newspaper brand readership. It was the first release to use full year print readership data

The data is timely, as two sector-leading brands (the Daily Telegraph and the Sun) announced in late March 2013 that they would begin charging for digital access. These announcements signal a strategic shift away from a 15 year commitment to digital advertising as the sole source of digital revenues, and consequently, to digital audience scale

This report illustrates NRS PADD audience data and makes some key observations about the varying success with which newspapers have built online audiences

Digital disruption is causing the decline and fall of print media, but the new online landscape is not settled. Not all newspapers will survive the transition to digital

So far, most newspaper brands (at least in the UK) have chosen to remain free online, relying on advertising revenue. Recent announcements at the Telegraph Media Group, News International and elsewhere indicate this is changing

While a handful of global news sites that achieve huge scale could remain free, many services will have to charge consumers for access

UK recorded music retail sales fell 8% in 2012 to £1 billion, as CD sales fell 21% to £540 million whilst digital formats rose 15% to £484 million on a huge 70% climb in subscriptions.

HMV store closures in 2013 will further dent CD sales, but accelerate the point of inflection (at least 50% digital sales) of the UK’s retail market.

The UK remains a robust source of royalties from performance of sound recordings, with PPL reporting revenues in 2011 of £153.5 million, up 7%.

Next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft, expected late this year/early next, will kick off a new cycle for the games industry, but enter a much more competitive market

Smartphones and tablets offer an alternative gaming model, with more variety, lower cost, greater convenience and, crucially, rapidly increasing sophistication

These new platforms are expanding gaming to a much larger audience, but also increasingly competing with consoles for the time and attention of core gamers. This could be the last recognisable console cycle

German unbundlers are in decline, unable to match cable for price or bandwidth, or to invest in new fibre networks. Vodafone, the second largest unbundler, must choose between consolidating and divesting Merging with Kabel Deutschland would deliver fixed line synergies – with high execution risks. But, based on the French and Spanish experiences, we doubt that a quad play strategy (synonymous with a price war) would generate value Mobile operators’ fixed line ventures are also in decline elsewhere in Europe, but cable is not always to blame, with pure play fixed line altnets also tending to outperform them, suggesting that genuine cross-selling advantages are marginal at best