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Douglas said “We have entered a frenzied phase of media innovation, both from inside established businesses and start-ups."
The UK net neutrality rules are up for review; as usual, the operators are pressuring for relaxation, and there are strong arguments that the competitiveness of UK telecoms markets make such rules innovation-quashing with no consumer benefit.
The chances of mainstream video content providers producing a windfall for telcos are slim, but there are a host of more intensely commercial content providers which have far greater potential to pay extra money for higher quality content delivery.
Future services such as virtual and augmented reality will stretch even FTTP/5G networks; allowing the telcos to develop custom business models to facilitate their delivery may well speed up the development and implementation of the metaverse in the UK.
Tom said the potential for the business "remains enormous", but its priorities are starting to change. "I think Netflix will approach pre-Covid like growth in 2022, but that growth will continue to be mostly outside of the US, UK and Canada."
"This is why the corporate narrative now concentrates on its non-English speaking content pipeline, its market-leading dubbing, subtitling and meta-tagging operations, which give the service a boost in those territories. The response from investors will depend on how much they mind about the tougher conditions in Netflix's domestic market."
He added that the move pre-empts the prospect of tighter regulatory scrutiny. "The scaling up of Netflix's operations in the past decade has been impressive, and its transition to becoming part of the establishment was intended."
Claire said “Without the debate on privatisation, it would have been impossible for those 60,000 organisations to make their views known.”
She explained that by reopening discussion it was actually “strengthening the remit for Channel 4”, which could lead to a codification of its essential functions, like reinvesting back into talent. This could then be passed on to a buyer, whoever that may be.
Gill said the ad market has enjoyed “phenomenal growth” in recent months and shows no signs of slowing over Christmas.
She added that traditional broadcasters have the opportunity to put on “big shows that appeal across age groups."
“The TV programme schedule is probably better at achieving that than a show on Netflix or Amazon, where it’s targeted more at one demographic or another."
Claire said “They have always been a deterrent, a very serious media company that no one wants to piss off. They aren’t your average garden variety deterrent, they are a big monster deterrent.”
She added “It is not viewed as a badly run business, it is efficiently and well run. Every part of their business is doing extraordinarily well at this time. A couple of exceptional years and people will see the core of the business is not in this secular decline. ITV is not getting the credit it should, but it will do.”
Fuelled by savings piles accumulated under work-from-home (WFH) and asset price inflation, the strong recovery of private consumption in H2 2021 from the depths of successive lockdowns drove spectacular growth in UK display advertising, up by 24% on 2020 to £16 billion, noting base effects from the dramatic plunge in 2020
With consumers largely WFH in 2021, TV soared 25%, online 28%. Spend on cinema and out-of-home (OOH) in 2021 remained well below 2019 values. In-home goods and services have been strong while those consumed OOH are weak. Government spend on public health messaging remained high in 2021
Private consumption, now also impacted by CPI inflation, will trend upwards in 2022 and power display advertising growth of over 9%, driven by online spend and the continued recovery of cinema, OOH and the press. The sunny uplands we forecast for 2022 could rapidly cloud depending on the course of Omicron as we face Year 3 of the pandemic
Abi said some investors were also reluctant that they could be “losing out” on any upside of online growth in titles like the Daily Mail if the group went private. “What this ignores is how many more online users would be required to fully replace declining print revenues and the scale of investment needed to transition the print readers of the Daily Mail to an online membership model of some kind."
