Further consolidation could lie ahead for the UK commercial radio sector. EMAP is expected to offer its radio assets for sale and Scottish Media Group plans to divest Virgin Radio. The battleground is competition for listeners drawn by the BBC's increasingly popular national radio networks. This report however examines past consolidation, which produced substantial cost savings, without noticeably improving the commercial sector's fortunes. In our view, for consolidation to succeed in this regard, much greater attention will need to be paid to improving content

The spat between Virgin and Sky over cable carriage of Sky basic channels has generated much blogging, mostly supportive of Virgin, although neither party appears to be gaining from the ‘zero sum game’ dispute

Hostilities between Sky and Virgin have intensified during the course of cable’s re-launch, Sky’s announcement of its pay-DTT plans, and bilateral negotiations over channel carriage fee payments on the satellite and cable platforms