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The UK consumer magazines business has shown steady growth and stable profitability, though some individual participants have suffered from failed attempts at international expansion. The industry has overcome the advertising recession very successfully so far. This is partly because only 30% of revenue is derived from advertising, but also because page rates have continued to be firm. Though profit margins are currently lower than regional newspapers, the sector shows considerable scope for improved returns.

Several factors lie behind this assessment.  The first is that growth of Internet households will slow, possibly to 10%, although expansion will be faster than in the UK or Germany.   The second is that Wanadoo, as the ISP arm of France Télécom, continues to benefit in our view from advantages that other ISPs cannot match, significantly reducing customer acquisition and retention costs, whether on narrowband or on broadband.  Actions taken by the regulator have largely been too little, too late.

In this report, we show that price competition between ISPs is helping to push broadband penetration to higher levels than we expected. BT is likely to achieve at least some of its targets for broadband connections. However, this is at the expense of profitability. We suggest that BT Retail is unlikely to make money on broadband connections, particularly in view of the high acquisition costs and the potential for subscriber churn. We also note that the BT strategy in broadband is crippling other ISPs.

This note provides our forecast for the number of UK households able to receive extra television through satellite, cable and terrestrial multi-channel platforms. Though Sky’s performance has been strong this year, subscriber growth has been largely at the expense of cable and digital terrestrial. We expect this pattern – Sky outperformance within a slowly growing multi-channel universe – to continue. We are pessimistic about the prospects for Freeview, the BBC’s new digital terrestrial platform. The programme offering is weak and too directed towards the under 35s, who now largely already have digital television. The technical problems of obtaining better coverage for the service remain severe.

The November 12th bids for football rights are a nightmare for Canal+. Its operating margins and cash flow are under pressure, but failure to outbid TPS would mean a probable loss of perhaps 25% of its subscribers. This makes it likely, we think, that TPS will end up buying Canal+ from Vivendi, whoever wins the football rights, at a much lower price than the valuation of €3.5bn suggested recently by Morgan Stanley. Similarly, Vivendi may realise that it will be forced to sell the studio and the record business to Bronfman/Diller for less than current valuations. This potential devastating scenario perhaps explains why M. Fourtou is so keen to buy the rest of Cegetel, rather than selling out to Vodafone. Otherwise he would have little else left to manage. Or perhaps he is simply playing poker with Chris Gent, but running the risk that he ends up over paying. Vodafone cannot lose. It will either buy Cegetel now, or wait for it to fall into its hands when the bankers withdraw support for Vivendi.

Weak revenue growth has been a feature of both European and US fixed line incumbent operators over the last six months, with the root of the problem lying in poor growth, or even decline, in the volume of voice calls. This report looks at the reasons.

Based on the recent announcement by the French Professional Football League, we now expect Canal+ to be awarded the exclusive rights to broadcast Premier League events for the three seasons starting in 2004, for which it offered €480 million. (Rival TPS is challenging the League's approach to the Competition Commission, so the story may yet have an unexpected ending.) These payments will add to an already hefty calendar of payments for Canal+ under the 1999 contract, as a result of which Canal+ is likely to report no or low profits in FY 2002. This note details the aggressive cost cutting and revenue-raising measures that will be needed to achieve a modest level of profitability going forward. By FY 2005, when Canal+ becomes the sole purveyor of Premier League events and payments rise by 60%, the subscriber base will have to be 180,000 higher just to maintain profits at 2004 levels. This seems a challenging target given that Canal+ lost 70,000 subscribers this year. In short, we think that Canal+ may have won the battle for Premier League rights at the price of its profitability in the medium-term.

In spite of the widely publicised decline in sales of recorded music, the 'music publishing' business grew at an average annual rate of over 4% between 1995 and 2000. This report assesses the prospects for this important segment of the music industry.

One response to the growth of the satellite and cable households has been for terrestrial broadcasters to launch their own digital channels. These channels are beginning to absorb significant fractions of the total programming budget and in this report we look at the implications for the parent broadcasters. We examine E4, Channel 4’s main satellite entertainment channel, showing that it is likely to remain a drain on the parent for many years to come. Rather than ‘strengthening the brand’ of terrestrial broadcasters, which is the reason normally given for diversification into satellite channels, our research shows that E4 and other services do nothing for the parent company and divert programming expenditure that would otherwise be usefully spent on the terrestrial service.

Universal Music is an important component of Vivendi’s business. As M. Fourtou shuffles his cards, the disposal or flotation of Universal becomes more likely by the day and this report values this market-leading record company.