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In part, this is due to the broadcasters retreating. “All kids viewing used to be with broadcasters, but they’ve taken their foot off the pedal over the last decade, more so than any other genre, because you can’t really monetise kids’ content,” says Tom Harrington of Enders Analysis. “There’s not much you can advertise against it, kids 0-4 viewing isn’t measured, and kids don’t really need new content because they love watching the same thing again and again so there’s no point commissioning 50 new episodes of Fireman Sam.”

“The kids don’t know what her politics are and if the kids watch and they’re quiet then I think that’s more powerful than probably any political belief,” says Harrington. “I would argue that you’d have to be quite a resilient person to say, well, I’m not going let the little ones watch that. I’d just prefer if they screamed for the next four hours.”

“We need to protect our national IP”, BBC boss Tim Davie told the Media & Telecoms 2025 and Beyond Conference, organized by Deloitte and Enders Analysis, in London on Tuesday. “That’s where the value is.” For example, “we need to decide if we’re going to invest in things like the World Service, which to me, is a no-brainer.”

Netflix is proudly commissioning U.K. programming with a focus on local audiences while being happy if they also end up traveling the world and becoming global hits, a top executive of the streamer told the Media & Telecoms 2025 & Beyond Conference in London, organized by Deloitte and Enders Analysis, on Tuesday.

Karen Egan, at Enders Analysis, argues that the regulatory process “was always going to be thus”.

“It’s a big move and I think the whole country needs to feel like it’s been properly thought through,” she says. “They came to the right decision and it’s good that they took their time.”

“I suppose it’s inevitable in these joint ventures that everyone’s going to be looking after their own self-interest, particularly as the final touches are put to the agreement,” says Egan.

“I imagine that [CK Hutchison] are especially nervous about being easily shunted into the background unless they’re on the front foot and protecting their interests at every opportunity.”

Enders’ analysts reckon some European markets may have seen annual rates of increase in mobile-data demand as low as 5% in recent quarters, though there is significant variation between countries. 

Douglas McCabe, at Enders Analysis, said: “If I’m being pessimistic, [local media is] still not at the bottom — there’s still some pain ahead.”

Pirated streaming of sports and premium TV is costing broadcasters and sports bodies billions of dollars a year, constituting “industrial scale theft of video services”, according to media analysts at Enders. 

Enders found that pirated feeds account for a “double digit percentage” of all viewing of premium sports and television, based on private data from broadcasters and analysis of internet data, though it was unable to put an exact figure on the scale of the problem.

A single pirated stream of a high-profile event, particularly a live football match, can attract “tens of thousands” of people, according to Enders, which on Friday will release a report analysing data from European TV groups. It found that this number may be multiplied many times when these streams are shared on social media.

Amazon Fire Sticks are enabling “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy, according to a report today from Enders Analysis, a media, entertainment, and telecommunications research firm. Technologies from other media conglomerates, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, are also enabling what the report’s authors deem an “industrial scale of theft."

The report, "Video piracy: Big tech is clearly unwilling to address the problem," focuses on the European market but highlights the global growth of piracy of streaming services as they increasingly acquire rights to live programs, like sporting events.