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The privatisation of the BBC’s two national music radio networks – Radio One and Radio Two – is in the news again and is being proposed by certain commentators as a potential solution to the current problems facing the UK commercial radio industry. This report argues that, far from being a solution, unleashing these two highly successful BBC stations on the commercial sector will imperil the existence of many stations. This would dramatically increase the volume of advertising time available, at a time of glut, and draw advertising spend away from many stations

UK commercial radio revenues increased by 6.7% in Q1 2008 year-on-year, resulting in four consecutive quarters of growth for the first time since 2004

We expect UK online advertising to reach £3.56 billion this year overtaking TV ad spend which we estimate will be £3.39 billion, making the internet the UK’s largest single advertising medium, accounting for over 19% of total expenditure

Consumer take-up both of DAB receiver hardware and of listening to digital-only radio stations has been slow, in spite of considerable investment in content and in transmission infrastructure for the platform by the BBC and commercial radio since 1995

Digital TV growth has consistently exceeded expectations since the launch of Freeview in October 2002, while 2007 saw a record annual increase in digital TV homes reception from 72.0% to 82.3%. These forecasts update our previous forecasts of DTV platform growth issued in December 2007 (see UK DTV Homes Platform Forecasts: 2003-2017 [2007-116]), taking into account the very strong final quarter of 2007 and recent market developments

France’s Council of State gave the green light to the draft law on ‘Creation and the Internet’, to combat internet piracy of content. If it completes the final hurdle of adoption by the Parliament, most likely in the autumn, France could become the first country to adopt a three-strikes rule to disconnect file-sharers

European revenue growth improved by a whole percentage point this quarter, jumping to 2.2% from 1.2% last quarter. Most of this (0.7 percentage points) was due to a reduced regulatory impact, and this should continue to improve throughout this year, with the impact due to drop from about 4% to less than 1% by early next year

The decline in broadband market growth has accelerated, with market net additions in Q1 down on Q4 for the first time in three years. Household penetration reached 59%

In our view the potential for synergies from an acquisition of Thus by C&W, though more limited than might be supposed, would still have a significant impact on the combined entity at the EBITDA level