Germany remains the second largest market in Europe for the exploitation of composition rights by their authors, with €382 million paid out to them in 2014, up 8% on 2013 (63% share of distributions on average). The German Government intends to secure an even “better balance for authors” in their contracts with music publishers, by allowing the composer to “re-tender” their contracts after five years to secure a better deal

GEMA, the collecting society, has a strong position in Germany and is poised to lead the development of the digital single market for online music services. Together with PRS for Music (UK) and STIM (Sweden), GEMA has formed a joint venture (JV) to offer multi-territory licensing and copyright administration services to services, music publishers and other CMOs, cleared by the EU Commission

Music publisher revenues from domestic collections could rise from €225 million to €247 million from 2014 to 2017, due to a moderate rise in broadcast revenues on the back of the economic recovery, a boost to public performance revenues from a higher live music tariff and flat royalties from recorded music expenditure, as the decline of physical mechanicals is offset by the rise of online royalties

Prospects for European free-to-air commercial broadcasters are clouded by a weak advertising recovery, decline in TV set viewing by younger age groups and increased competition from pay-TV and international operators.

Growth opportunities are nevertheless to be found in fine tuning families of channels to sustain audience shares, increased production of differentiating original content, wider HD and catch-up programmes distribution and smart pay-TV developments – broadcasters must focus on strengthening the quality gap between the TV set experience and online entertainment.

ITV has shown the greatest increase in profitability, benefitting from its global production strategy. RTL and ProSiebenSat.1 have a modest upside from carriage fees for HD channels but production and pay-TV initiatives have yet to pay off. TF1 and M6 have withdrawn from pay-TV and face regulatory obstacles to launching channels and production investments. Mediaset in Italy should benefit from the ad market stabilising, but risks large pay-TV losses. In Spain, Mediaset and Atresmedia enjoy an ad boom.

Prisa, the 98% owner of Sogecable, has put Spain’s leading pay-TV platform Digital+ up for sale in order to make a large reduction in its debts

Rising audiences for Cuatro in a booming TV advertising market have unexpectedly lifted Sogecable earnings in H1 2007, encouraging confidence that Cuatro will achieve breakeven in 2008, if not in 2007

With 84,000 net pay-TV additions in 2006, Sogecable resumed subscriber growth, but we expect this pace to decline in 2007 unless Sogecable re-positions on basic and expands distribution from satellite to cable and DSL

Spain’s top football club FC Barcelona (Barça) has threatened to withdraw its broadcast licence from Sogecable unless it matches an offer from Mediapro that is almost double the current annual fee for the two football seasons commencing 2006/2007 

The present TV advertising slump appears due to a uniquely British combination of very rapid digital TV growth and singular advertising airtime regulations that include the Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) remedy 

Sogecable FY 2005 results recorded the first net profit (€7.7 million) since 2001, two and a half years after the merger with Vía Digital. With the after effects and restructuring costs of this merger behind it, the question we examine in this note is what growth can Sogecable's pay-TV business look forward to and what extra contribution will be made by the national free-to-air (FTA) analogue channel Cuatro, which launched on 7th November 2005?

Under rules agreed with the EC no one party could win all six packages. The surprise is that BSkyB has only won four, the other two going to Setanta. Although BSkyB has won the four ‘best-looking’ packages, it must pay an extra £97 million per annum for two thirds as many games 

This report examines pay-TV developments in Spain where Digital+, Sogecable's DTH pay-TV service, has just celebrated its first birthday (Sogecable [2003-23]). Sogecable financial targets for 2005 are within reach.

The long drawn out merger between the two Spanish pay-TV operators will finally be consummated in the next few weeks. As we have seen elsewhere in Europe, competition in pay-TV produces little but red ink. Investors will be pleased that Sogecable and Via Digital are finally combining. We have little doubt that this merger will eventually produce a profitable and successful business. But management appears too optimistic about the likely continuing cash drains as operations are combined and costs reduced over the next two years.