The publisher playbook: Habit is the north star

Referral collapse and AI summarisation have made it harder for content investment to capture commercial value. Original reporting remains the authority anchor of the bundle, but the economics of serving habitual news users have become structurally harder.

High engagement does not automatically translate into loyalty. Sustainable growth depends on three engines: engagement (depth and distinctive voice), habit (repeatable utility driving daily return) and community (shared identity binding users to brand).

Distinctive voice and personality are the moat in an AI-mediated environment. Publishers building branded formats, creator programmes and deliberate pathways from platform presence back into owned products are constructing defensible, post-platform economics.

European service revenue growth declined to -1.3% in Q4 as trouble in France weighed even more heavily.

In contrast to a couple of years ago, the Italian and Spanish markets have the most positive momentum.

Network sovereignty is driving satellite direct-to-device strategies, and may cause some regret about mobile tower sales, which are also proving more contentious than hoped.

We forecast broadcaster viewing to decline to 50% of all video viewing by 2031 (from 54% in 2025), driven by continued declines in live viewing, albeit at a slower rate than the sharp year-on-year drop seen in 2025.

Non-live broadcaster viewing will increase its share, supported by older demographics as viewing plateaus among under-35s—a trend also true of SVOD services. YouTube is projected to continue its advance on the TV set across all ages.

Although total TV ‘usage’ is flat versus pre-COVID levels, a material and seemingly growing proportion of it (~9%) is when nothing is being watched (e.g. pausing, browsing): this is correlated with smartphone usage and impinges on actual viewing volumes.