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Claire said “I don’t know what his expectations are, but I imagine that someone will tell him that he will have to restrain his desire to make public pronouncements."

“What he brings to the role is the political connection. He’s the opposite in every respect from Lord Burns and Dame Patricia Hodgson, who were his predecessors, because neither of them expressed their political views."

“Also neither of them had a specific agenda that they’d been pursuing for some time to diminish and change institutions such as the BBC or Channel Four, which have been established by Parliament and only Parliament can change,” she adds.

Tom sounds a note of caution. “Supercharging Doctor Who makes sense for BBC Studios, but less so for Sony,” he says. “Sony is the only studio without a direct-to-consumer streaming service, so greater value would have to be derived from sales. 

Is there a big international buyer that wants to license – and fund – the show? Perhaps, but if there is that sort of demand, why is the show generally only on smaller channels internationally, such as BBC America? That being said, maybe Sony will take a ‘build it and they will come’ philosophy to the show.”

Tom said it may be difficult for other streamers to follow Netflix as easily in monetizing account sharing, even if it does seem inevitable. “Other streamers do not have this strength, with churn much higher and value more tenuous, but this is the direction of travel that they want, will and need to go."

He added “Of, say, the 15 to 20 percent of users that are getting the service for free, some will subscribe or bolt on to the account they are currently leeching off. Few of the paying subs will unsubscribe, with their immediate value remaining the same. A clampdown will be a net positive for Netflix.”

Alice said the deal was unsurprising in the context of the current market: “The first, and perhaps most obvious point, is that we are now another regional publisher fewer in the UK. Consolidation is always to be expected in a declining industry.”

She added  “Like any merger, it is likely the new owners will seek to reduce costs and overheads, though Rcapital will have likely realised many back-office rationalisations.”

Alice told City A.M. that it was “unsurprisingly disappointing for the many other advertising-reliant digital native media companies watching."

She explained how there was an inherent danger for companies like BuzzFeed in shifting from the “media” label to the “tech” one. Pickthall said it was always going to struggle to live up to investor expectations.

Tom said “The public perception has been that these services are cheap. And they certainly were. But the cost is now quickly transitioning from what is for many an automatic and then forgotten regular discretionary spend, to a noticeable chunk leaving their account.”

He added “The streaming market has been supported by debt-funded, loss-leading, loss-making models. Netflix entered the market and set a budget price and everyone has had to come in under that to compete. You had all these profitable content companies, pay-TV and linear-TV broadcasters who had to move into streaming, and it is not as profitable. Now they have to start looking at value, and customers are going to be continually asked to pay more until these things make real money.”

Jamie said "Telegram's profile has grown enormously in recent weeks, and that has raised the stakes about the impact of misinformation on the platform."

He added "Meta employs tens of thousands of moderators and huge problems still slip through the net," said MacEwan. "It is unclear how much investment in moderation Telegram can support on its current funding model."

Niamh framed the move as a “scaling back” of the bill, changing the focus from making these platforms “safe spaces” to trying to weed out particular content deemed harmful. Burns has sympathy for the government’s efforts, but warned that it was a game of “playing catch up."