Radio listening is strong, but with a dramatic decline among the under-24s. Smart speakers will accelerate the trend and while the draft Media Bill’s intervention is helpful, it is not the cure.

The commercial sector is thriving through the launch of digital-only stations and major players taking advantage of deregulation. The issue of attracting a new generation is pressing.                                       

The once-dominant BBC has a loyal older following. Hampered by regulation, it is difficult to see how younger audiences will develop an affinity with its audio offering.

Mobile service revenue growth finally got close to the rate of inflation this quarter, doubling to 7.5% as the operators benefitted from mid-teen price rises.

Growth will wane from here with expected revenue growth of 6% this calendar year and 3% next, with ongoing cost-inflation pressures.

H3G looks set to fare better than others on the top-line in 2024 but its profitability is looking somewhat irredeemable, with negative cashflow even with more normalised capex.

Market revenue growth surged to 2% in Q2, but entirely-and-more driven by price rises, with underlying trends negative across volumes and ARPU.

Broadband volumes in particular turned sharply negative, largely due to a post-lockdown hangover combining with weak economic conditions.

The outlook is bleak: price rise benefits are set to wane and then reverse, and weak volumes will feed through, with economic recovery needed for a return to sustainable growth.

 

In a reform of the competition regime for digital markets, by 2025 the UK will have conduct regimes for platforms including Google, Meta and Apple, overseen by the Digital Markets Unit.

Nested within could be a ‘fair bargaining’ regime for platforms and news groups, following Australia and Canada, whose lessons could be valuable to preserve platforms’ incentives to serve news. In Canada, platforms are refusing to pay to serve news links to their users, and plan to exit this form of content.

Financial transfers to UK news groups by platforms is among the new UK regime’s aims, but is unlikely to make up for the declining revenue trend of local news provision whose sustainability is most at risk.

Thanks to Parks (+11% YoY, $2.43 billion), Disney's Q3 operating income remained flat, balancing the decline from Media and Entertainment (-18% YoY, $1.13 billion) as DTC only lost $512 million and linear dropped by 23% ($1.89 billion). No new major growth initiatives were announced but Disney will look to stem DTC losses through Disney+ price rises and a password sharing crackdown.

Major segment resets are looming as Disney looks for new partners for ESPN and possibly buyers for its legacy TV business, ABC.

A difficult remainder of the year will be prolonged if the Hollywood talent unions strike into the autumn and beyond, while Bob Iger stays on as CEO through 2026.

Electronic Arts’ earnings for Q1 2024 delivered strong annual growth across its licensed franchises but also a worrying lag in mobile game revenue due to mobile sector challenges.

EA’s global dominance of sports-based games, and its 700m users, make it a strong candidate to be a ‘strategic partner’ with Disney for ESPN’s reboot as a direct-to-consumer service.

The launch of EA Sports FC24 next month finally sheds FIFA from EA’s largest franchise and promises a dynamic approach to managing football partnerships, but no word on increased margins.

While VMO2's fixed price rises this year were always going to be quite tricky, the 1ppt boost to revenue growth was nonetheless disappointing on the back of price rises of 14%.

Both mobile and EBITDA performances were better, but H2 EBITDA growth will need to be considerably stronger to get to guidance levels, which will be all the more challenging with the loss of the Lycamobile MVNO.

With the erosion of VMO2's differentiators of split contracts and broadband speeds, growth at VMO2 will require addressing new parts of the market—both geographically and across the customer range.

ITV’s external revenues saw only a small decline in H1 (-2%), a product of the Studios business’ solid growth (+8%, £1.0 billion) offsetting a very tough period for television advertising, which saw an 11% YoY decline.

Despite the appearance of a contracting market, ITV remains very confident in the continued organic growth of Studios, while the ad market looks to be improving although the full year will be down.

ITVX is growing both in total viewing and the length of viewing session, an outcome of improving the experience and content offering. However, broadcast viewing of ITVX exclusives is lower than might be expected, indicating that cannibalised linear viewing is more of a driver of ITVX growth than ITV seems to suggest.

Social tariffs have provided relief for some at a time of household income squeeze and otherwise unavoidable high inflation-driven telco price increases.

Adoption has risen but remains very low, limiting their effectiveness, and more widespread adoption would expose their shortcomings, with the risk of penalizing low cost operators and significantly increasing prices for non-adopters (by up to 20%).

A better approach might be to recognize that affordability issues are narrower but deeper than current social tariffs can address, with fuller, centrally funded subsidies targeted more narrowly at those most in need.

Unprecedented growth in women’s sport is generating opportunities for publishers and advertisers. This year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup provides a chance to capitalise on the elevated coverage and interest

Women’s sport coverage must forge its own identity in the long term. News publishers play an enormous role by nourishing interest and discourse, creating brand opportunities and raising the profile of women’s sport

Articles currently must clear a higher bar for inclusion, though this will shift in the near term as coverage continues growing: variations in the type, style, and quantity of coverage highlight the progress made so far and identify areas of ongoing improvement