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The continuing value of linear television is underlined by the fact that television is still comfortably the biggest display advertising medium, and we expect to see strong growth in 2014 and 2015 in spite of the growing impact of online to TV viewing.

Viewing among the 35+s has held up well, and the subset of 45-64s, who control most of the UK’s disposable income and are heavy TV viewers while embracing new technology and modern attitudes, will become increasingly important for broadcasters as the age profile of the UK gets older.

We do not see an overall dramatic shift away from television to other forms of entertainment, though this cannot be taken for granted.

UKTV has posted annual figures showing record revenues of £278 million in 2013, with the promise of more to come after an H1 2014 that has seen it overtake Channel 4 main channel in adult 16+ Share of Commercial Impact (SOCI) delivery and now closing in on Sky and Channel 5.

The rise in adult 16+ SOCI every year since the Freeview launch in 2002 reflects not only UKTV’s preparedness to invest more in content over time, but also management focus on EPG prominence on the free-to-air and pay platforms and unceasing willingness to try new channel ideas.

The challenge now facing the UKTV group is how to maintain growth in an increasingly connected TV landscape. Innovative UKTV Play notwithstanding, the big question comes down to content strategy and the scale of future investment.

Amazon’s acquisition of Twitch, a platform for watching and broadcasting live streams of video gameplay, provides the ecommerce giant access to a large, fast growing and highly engaged gaming audience.

Like other media, retailing of games is in a state of transition away from physical media, where Amazon is more dominant, to digital, where Amazon is one player among many; this acquisition echoes those Amazon has made in other media.

Twitch looks set to be a successful business in its own right, arguably reason enough to buy it; more importantly it offers valuable consumer behaviour data, as well as technology and platform benefits, and enhances Amazon’s increasingly ambitious customer proposition.

After a relatively benign year in 2013 for UK recorded music thanks to a small pickup in trade revenues, we project a 5% decline in 2014, with digital music purchasing now falling as consumers shift to ad-supported and subscription access services, while CD sales continue to drop at a double-digit pace each year.

The UK reached a new milestone at the end of 2013 surpassing 1.3 million paying subscribers, a large number of non-paying 'hard bundled' subscribers on Orange/Deezer and Vodafone/Spotify 4G plans, plus several million Spotify freemium and Spotify Free 'smart radio' users.

We project steady expenditure on recorded music as a whole in the period to 2017 from consumers and advertisers at £1.1 billion annually, but anticipate the loss of £90 million in trade revenues in the shift to access due to the labels' lower revenue-share.

Older adults have always watched more TV than younger adults, and even more TV news. The gap has widened over the last five years following the rapid rise in online news consumption via websites or apps among the under 35s, where online is now used as widely as TV for getting news.

Recently published survey data by Ofcom (UK) and Reuters (10 countries) highlight the importance of online as a tool for accessing breaking news, whether search engines, news websites or social networks, along with an expanding field of news content.

Online, with its emphasis on reading rather than watching news stories is no direct substitute for TV. The BBC is by a large margin the most widely accessed online source in the UK, while the challenge for the other TV news providers is to develop commercial models that successfully integrate broadcast with online.

Market revenue growth in the UK residential communications sector continued to be robust in Q2 2014 at 5.4%, a slight increase on the previous quarter, with continued volume growth and firm pricing countering weak call volumes and the negative impact of a VAT legislation change hitting Virgin Media and TalkTalk

BT was the fastest growing out of the ‘big four’ in revenue terms in Q2 even after the direct revenue impact of BT Sport is excluded, a remarkable turnaround after being in last place a year ago, driven by both volume and ARPU growth continuing to accelerate, with fibre helping both

Since the end of Q2, promotional activity has already intensified, particularly from BT and Sky around the start of the new football season, and churn is likely to be under more pressure at all of the operators, although the disruption is likely to be less severe than that experienced around the launch of BT Sport last year, and we expect all of the major players to continue to grow in net terms