Homepage

Claire said “Privatisation gives C4 access to an altogether different kind of future – one of much greater ambition,” she said. “It is an opportunity for C4 to become a completely different kind of business - to greatly reduce its dependency on advertising, to be able to develop much more significant partnerships in the world, to have access to globally-relevant technology and partnerships…and secure access to global capital markets.”

She added “There is an opportunity for C4 to pass from the relatively troublesome stewardship of the government into a situation where it’s going to be able to regain its full editorial independence, which has greatly diminished."

Francois said “It sounds healthy to me because if you award the contract competitively you have a better chance of getting value for money. I think the prospects are very bullish. It’s the best football competition in the world. The European public doesn’t seem about to change its faith. So if I were a private investor I would think it’s a very good asset.”

He added “Is it going to double in value in the next 10 years? No. Because this competition is very dependent on the competitiveness of broadcasting markets,” Godard added. 

“In the past 10 years it went up but one specific thing stimulated the market, the entrance of BT. And that had an impact on the rest of the continent. We have no sign that this is about to be repeated.”

Douglas said "TalkTV will benefit from being part of a much bigger portfolio, including beyond the UK, compared to GB News."

James said while a Sky-Virgin tie-up would be “unhelpful” for BT, it would be “incredibly problematic” for altnets with ambitious full-fibre plans because it would take away their chances of ever poaching Sky’s block of six million subscribers.

Claire said she expected that hundreds of thousands of new customers would join Sky and highlighted the mobile phone-like payment plan as a radical move that could open up the broadcaster to a new audience. “This is like the iPhone. It’s that kind of moment."

Julian said "Sky is planning a massive marketing campaign for Sky Glass over the next three months, which takes us to Christmas, and Sky will be keen to see this launch succeed, so no doubt it’ll encourage its existing customers to upgrade wherever possible. That said, although this is a huge product launch, Sky doesn’t really need to rush to switch its customers over from satellite."

He added "Given the typical replacement cycle for a TV set is over 5 years (and perhaps up to 8 or 10), if someone has bought a brand new set in the last year or two then it might be a while before they wish to splash out on another. As a result, there are many years left for satellites."