Claire Enders was quoted in an article on the announcement by Karen Bradley, the UK culture secretary, on the Sky/Fox bid. Ms Bradley said that she was minded to widen a referral to regulators about the £11.7bn deal, to include scrutiny of corporate governance controls at Fox News. Ms Bradley raised new concerns about the transaction, overruling a recommendation from Ofcom, the media watchdog, that regulators consider only the deal’s impact on the UK media market. Claire said “Ofcom hasn’t changed its mind. “There is no new news, but the secretary of state has decided to go for the safest option to protect her from a judicial review. This shows the government just needs a quiet time”.

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on the Express, once the best-selling newspaper in the world, which could be heading for new ownership. On Friday, Trinity Mirror, publisher of the Daily and Sunday Mirror, as well as 150 local UK titles, said it was in exclusive talks to acquire the Express and Star newspapers, along with the magazine assets owned by Mr Desmond’s parent company, Northern and Shell. Although both sides stressed that a deal is still some way off, Trinity’s renewed interest — the two sides tried but failed to clinch a deal back in 2015 — presents Mr Desmond, 65, with the opportunity to bail out of the rapidly shrinking newspaper business. Throughout Mr Desmond’s time in charge, the Express group has posted healthy profits. But during his ownership, the daily newspaper has been eclipsed by rival the Daily Mail, with circulation falling from more than 1m at the time of Mr Desmond’s takeover in 2000, to just below 400,000 today. Douglas said “every publisher has had to make cuts over the past few years. But the Express group has been more ruthless than most”.

Matti Littunen was quoted in an article on the growing numbers of people using mobile devices to access social media or watch films and popular television boxed sets. Accordingly, Enders Analysis research published yesterday showed that for the first time more than half of the total number of minutes spent online by Britons is via mobile devices, with more than 36 million people spending an average of two hours accessing the internet on their phones or tablets every day. Matti said that bigger screens, the availability of faster and better connections and the rising popularity of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime were helping to drive higher levels of smartphone use. He added that the rising level of smartphone penetration was being driven further by “changing attitudes” towards banking, ecommerce and dealing with local government. Increasingly, this was encouraging people to perform everyday tasks online that previously they would have done manually. “It’s only logical that for people who don’t need a big screen, they will gradually shift towards mobile only”.

François Godard was quoted in an article on football sports rights. BT and Sky are paying a combined £1.7 billion per season for live domestic rights for the Premier League until 2019, betting that the fireworks and furore surrounding matches will bring in subscribers and advertisers. Instead of enjoying a clear path to their goal of happy punters and booming profits, the two broadcasters have challengers encroaching on the pitch. On one side are the pirates - a third of Premier League fans watched games regularly via illegal streams - and on the other are the giants, with speculation rife that the likes of Amazon, Google and Facebook want to muscle in on the game. It is clear where immediate attention is focused. Piracy disturbs some BT and Sky shareholders — with the broadcasters airing 42 and 126 fixtures, respectively, each year — as much as it frustrates their paying subscribers. François suggested that the heavily-promoted move “reveals they may have some concerns about take up”. BT investors “may become uncomfortable” if its rights investment continues to grow, he added that Sky also could be tied down because its room to lift prices “may be very limited”.

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on The Guardian plan to create a joint commercial sales operation. The UK newspaper is to press ahead talks to form an unlikely alliance with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to sell advertising. The plan, now known as project Arena, was a direct response to the alarming decline in print advertising revenues that has been upending the newspaper business. GMG is one year into a three-year reorganisation to slash costs and reduce heavy losses that had at one stage threatened the future of the organisation. But cash outflows in its past financial year were £67.3m — only slightly down from £72.3m in 2015/16. A total of 300 jobs went in a shake-up across the group, while The Guardian is set to go to a tabloid format from the first quarter of next year, a move that will save the business between £5m and £7m a year in 2018/19. Douglas said that to break even by 2019, the business would have to find a “further £45m of savings over the next two years”.

Claire Enders was quoted in an article on Dame Carolyn McCall, who will take charge of ITV next January. Although her appointment was widely welcomed by analysts and media executives, the boss of the no-frills airline will nevertheless need to steer the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster through some potentially turbulent times. Under former chief executive Adam Crozier, ITV reduced its reliance on the cyclical advertising market by expanding its production division, ITV Studios, to become a major player in the international content business. But advertising still made up 47 per cent of ITV’s revenues of £3bn in 2016, and the problem for Dame Carolyn is that she is taking over just as the ad market heads into its most severe downturn since the financial crisis of 2009. Claire said “TV revenue is heading into the unknown, and there’s no end in sight to the decline of the core TV business”.

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on Bertelsmann announcement to expand its stake in Penguin Random House, cementing the German media conglomerate’s position as the dominant force in global publishing. The billion-dollar deal with Pearson gives Bertelsmann overall control of a company that is already a behemoth in publishing. The transaction should strengthen PRH at a time when publishers are facing pressure from Amazon, which dominates the ebook market. Douglas said “it’s important to have serious clout if you’re trying to negotiate with giants like Amazon, and that’s part of the recipe”, adding that, “Bertelsmann is adapting to the digital world, but they’re also taking the view that the business of physical books will remain robust, for the near future at least”.

Alice Enders was quoted in an article on the Fox-Sky deal. Yesterday, the UK culture secretary Karen Bradley announced, in a statement to MPs following a three-month investigation by the media regulator Ofcom, that she was likely to refer the deal, where 21st Century Fox would acquire the 61 per cent of the company it does not own, to Britain’s competition enforcement. She added that Rupert Murdoch’s effort to take full control of European pay TV broadcaster Sky would probably give him too much power over the UK media and the political process, throwing up a significant hurdle to his effort to seal the £11.7bn takeover. Alice said that the formation of a separate legal entity, similar to the one created by BT to tackle regulator concerns over its ownership of the broadband network Openreach, might convince ministers. She added “this is a political decision. We have always said the takeover has inherent merit, but there’s powerful political opposition”.

Enders Analysis was quoted in an article on traditional media groups that are starting to feel the biggest impact from digital disruption. For the first time since the financial crash drove the advertising industry into recession in 2009, advertising’s big four — WPP, Publicis, Omnicom and Interpublic Group — are stalling. Enders said in a recent report “the advertising industry is undergoing profound change. Overall advertising spend continues to grow at a faster rate than consumer spending. But . . . vital signs in the market are alarming”. Adding that, the increasing focus on short-term slots — driven by the speed and efficiency of programmatic online advertising — poses a serious threat to the traditional role agencies have played in developing memorable campaigns for big brands such as Coke, Apple and McDonald’s. Moreover, Enders found that the balance between long-term brand building and short-term activation was broadly equal at 50 per cent, but would soon tip to 60/40 in favour of the short term, handing even more power over advertising to the tech platforms. Research shows that chief marketing officers hold their posts for shorter periods than other senior executives, adding to the short-termism.

Claire Enders was quoted in an article on the growing popularity of streaming services, which has sparked the biggest fall in viewing figures for Premier League football on Sky TV for seven years, prompting doubts over the future of a valuable source of income for clubs. Claire said that the fall in TV viewing figures was linked to the rapid growth of services where matches are streamed live to a device via a phone signal. She said that the impact on Sky and BT was potentially “catastrophic” unless they could come up with an improved business model. Streaming services may be via Sky or BT’s own services, Sky Go or the BT Sport app. Claire added that “It’s a well-established trend. A younger generation is quite happy with [illegal] smartphone streaming. The quality might not be great but it’s a lot better than paying £50 or £60 per month . . . There is no practical way you can exclude streaming like this from a sports stadium”.