Claire Enders was quoted in an article on 21st Century Fox’ takeover of Sky, which will proceed as planned despite Disney’s bid. 21st Century Fox owns 39 per cent of Sky and has bid £11.7 billion for the remainder. The Competition and Markets Authority is scrutinising how the offer would affect media plurality and broadcasting standards. Opponents have argued that sexual harassment scandals at Fox News rendered the group unfit to own Sky. However, Claire said “the minister is no longer facing a whipped-up parliament making claims that the Murdochs will ‘Foxify’ Sky News”. Sky has warned that it could shut down its loss-making news channel if the watchdog blocked the takeover. Concerns have been raised about Disney’s long-term commitment to subsidising a loss-making news network given the US group’s prime focus on profit-making family entertainment. Claire added “Disney does not run vanity businesses. We can clearly see from the announcement that Disney is planning to take several billion dollars out of the combined costs. I presume one of the cost savings they will seek to effect over time is the elimination of the losses at Sky News and Sky Sports. I would have thought that in two years’ time, Sky News will be subject to pressure to reduce losses and cut its costs”.

Claire Enders was quoted in an article on BT, which is heading into a critical auction of UK Premier League rights. The British telecoms group’s chief executive Gavin Patterson, is already raising the prospect of losing BT’s rights to Premier League games. He said the group’s ambition was to retain its position as a “strong number two” behind Sky in pay-TV sports. Claire said “These two companies have bid to kill and — if not that — fatally wound each other, and this behaviour has been visible in every major auction since 2012 and continues to this day”.

Francois Godard was quoted in an article on Altice’s shares, which have almost halved in the past few weeks after poor third-quarter results were compounded by worries over its high levels of debt. In 2014, Altice acquired SFR, which still accounts for almost half of its revenues. This deal making has left Altice saddled with about €51bn of debt, much larger than the company’s €15bn market capitalisation and more than five times its earnings before interest, taxes, amortisation and depreciation. Investors want to see that Altice can manage the businesses that it has expensively assembled — particularly in France, its largest market. Francois said “besides sustaining network deployments, to turn around SFR, Altice needs to abandon short-term fixes, invest in its workforce and customer service and differentiate through valuable innovation — in other words the opposite of the model followed so far”.

Enders Analysis was quoted in an article on the expensive competition for entertainment content. In the past 12 months, Netflix has spent $8.5 billion on programming for its subscription video-on-demand service. With consumers increasingly watching movies and television via on-demand streaming, the Netflix subscription model is gaining on traditional models of advertising-funded viewing. As a result, Netflix and other streaming services have proved themselves nimbler and more willing to take risks than Hollywood studios. They also have several advantages over traditional television incumbents, not least the fact that in the UK they are not bound by regulations such as the 9pm watershed (only a quarter of Netflix’s original content would be allowed before the UK watershed). They also have such deep pockets that the team at Enders Analysis believes it is doubtful whether in a decade’s time Britain’s public service broadcasters will still be able to compete.

Claire Enders was quoted in an article on the change of viewing habits, as the increasing appeal of programmes available from streaming services is shaking up the world of television. For decades, the bosses at Hollywood studio giants, including Disney, had controlled the biggest stars and had signed the fattest pay cheques in the global entertainment business. Suddenly, it was upstarts such as Netflix and Amazon that seemed to be in charge, hiring the best talent, drawing hundreds of millions of subscribers to their booming internet streaming services and making the industry dance to their tune. With consumers increasingly choosing to watch movies and television shows via on-demand streaming, often on smartphone or tablet, traditional models of advertising-funded viewing are being hit hard, forcing the industry to come up with new strategies to compete. Claire believes that Netflix is trying to cut out the studios and that this is forcing many to consider defensive mergers and acquisitions. Everybody, she said, “is thinking about how to circle the wagons”.

Claire Enders was quoted in an article on the prospect of Mr Murdoch and his sons to sale 21st Century Fox prime film and television assets to Walt Disney. Claire said “you will not find the Murdochs selling a damn thing unless they are forced to — or humiliated politically. They’ve never been sellers and don’t need the money”. She added that James Murdoch was particularly personally invested in acquiring Sky, saying “he has spent 10 years trying to buy it. [James] has always been a one-track guy”. Six years ago, the family’s reputation took a knock from the phone-hacking scandal, which led to Rupert Murdoch apologising to MPs and the eventual withdrawal of its first Sky bid. Claire said “there are huge reputational advantages to James and the Murdochs of this [latest] deal clearing”.

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on Glamour magazine, which announced yesterday that it would relaunch as a “digital first” beauty brand, with its final monthly magazine coming out next month. Although the Condé Nast title will publish a “collectible” edition every six months, the new direction reflects alarm within the publishing industry about the long-term future of beauty and celebrity magazines. Douglas said “circulation has been declining very rapidly across magazines generally but the women’s sector in particular, really since the smartphone became mass market.”

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on the magazine world, where even the most prestigious titles have been challenged by the never-ending penetration of the internet and its abundance of free news and entertainment. With circulation and advertising revenues under pressure on both sides of the Atlantic magazines are facing an increasingly uncertain future. In fact, Magna Global, a media buying agency, expects magazines’ global advertising revenues to fall 13 per cent this year, while Enders Analysis, a media research group, has warned that the consumer magazine market was reaching “an existential threshold”. Douglas said “the industry is shrinking, and the decline seems to be accelerating both in circulation and in advertising — for print and online”. In the longer term, magazine publishers still have to work out what to do about the internet. He added “the way print advertising always worked was advertisers would pay for a magazine’s audience but also for the environment and the context”, but online magazines “have nothing like the same context and resonance” because a reader might stumble across an article on Facebook or Twitter and then immediately go somewhere else. Publishers, he says, have been “chasing a myth about digital advertising. In print they might have 100,000 readers while online they can get 10m. But that’s irrelevant because the 100,000 are the right 100,000 and more valuable”. Online advertising rates continue to lag print rates at their peak so in chasing large online readerships, magazines have “diluted the very essence of their brand . . . they have lost sight of what audience targeting really means”.

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on Time Inc, who wants to sell its UK magazines division, including well-known titles such as Country Life, TV Times and the NME, as part of a wider shake-up of the struggling US publishing group. The move is part of what the company called a “strategic transformation programme” and comes after Time abandoned plans to sell itself in April, ending months of speculation over the future of the group which owns Time, People and Sports Illustrated. On Friday Time reported a 17 per cent fall in second quarter print and other advertising revenues, and confirmed a $400m cost-savings programme. Time, formerly known as IPC, is one of the UK’s biggest magazine publishers. According to data from Enders Analysis the company’s titles attracted the highest annual circulation in the UK in 2016 with 168.7m. Douglas said that while the move by Time was not a shock, it was still a “big decision” for the US group. Adding that “the UK is a very important territory, probably the biggest outside the US. But print ads are tough, digital advertising hasn’t taken off and its market share is being threatened by bloggers and other social media online”.

Claire Enders was quoted in an article on the UK Culture Secretary, Karen Bradley, concerns over corporate governance failures at Rupert Murdoch's Fox, and lack of procedures of broadcast compliance for Fox News in the UK. Recent scandals at Fox News are threatening to derail Rupert Murdoch’s proposed £11.7bn takeover of European pay-TV group Sky after the UK government signalled that it was likely to widen an investigation by regulators into the deal. In a significant shift, the culture secretary said she was now likely to refer the bid to the Competition and Markets Authority on whether 21st Century Fox’s acquisition of Sky shares it does not own would comply with UK broadcasting standards. Her shift in position, which followed intensive campaigning from anti-Murdoch groups and a cross-party group of MPs, also overruled a recommendation from the UK media regulator Ofcom, prompting some analysts to question whether the move was politically motivated. Claire said “this was a political decision. It’s very peculiar to override Ofcom despite no change to their advice”.