This report examines Ofcom's proposal that independently funded news consortia (IFNCs) assume the provision of regional TV news, occupying the regional news time slots vacated by the Channel 3 licensees

IFNCs are to be composed of commercial news organisations (television producers, newspaper groups, radio stations or websites), and will operate as private commercial/publicly funded hybrid models of regional news gathering and provision, alongside the BBC and commercial news organisations

DCMS has invited tenders for three IFNC pilots covering Channel 3 regions in Northern England and the Borders, Scotland and Wales, to be awarded in May 2010 with operations to commence by summer 2010.

Vodafone Europe’s service revenue growth declined again in the September quarter to -4.6%, but on an underlying basis it improved, and volume growth also improved, suggesting that improving economic fundamentals are starting to feed through

Margins again fell, with the net benefit of the cost reduction program a long way from compensating for revenue declines, but overhead costs are at least dropping in absolute terms

We are optimistic that revenue growth can continue recovering in Europe, implying a still-depressed 2009/10 but a much better 2010/11, with positive revenue growth in 2010/11 a real possibility, and that the company could stabilise margins if it sticks to cost reduction plans, and resists the temptation to ‘reinvest’ in ‘strategic’ initiatives

At TalkTalk Group (TTG) net broadband additions at TalkTalk/AOL UK were unexpectedly strong, with low cannibalisation of Tiscali subscribers particularly good news

At the newly acquired Tiscali UK, the inevitable skeletons are starting to emerge from their cupboards. Management appears well prepared for the challenges, although it is early days

Carphone Warehouse’s distribution business grew connections at 2.1% during the quarter, another very creditable performance in a declining market, and it remains well positioned for the market recovery

Vodafone has launched a suite of internet services, platforms and handsets under the ‘Vodafone 360’ umbrella brand

Our views are mixed: we applaud the contacts back-up service that will be available across a wide range of handsets, provided it proves user friendly, but are puzzled by the point of a Vodafone-designed user interface built onto a fairly obscure smartphone operating system

Overall, if Vodafone 360 can stimulate data usage amongst low- to mid-end handset users, Vodafone would profit in both revenue and loyalty terms, but competing at the high end with the likes of Apple, RIM and Google strikes us as both needless and futile

The impending Competition Commission announcement of its provisional decision concerning the Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) remedy is expected to make little change beyond extending CRR to cover variants of ITV1, such as ITV1 +1 and ITV1 HD

Extending CRR to cover ITV1 variants should benefit ITV NAR (Net Advertising Revenue) by improving ITV1’s overall audience share, but does nothing to ease the deflationary pressures now gripping the TV advertising medium, where CRR works hand in hand with the requirement on the commercial PSB channels to sell 100% of their advertising inventories

The current goings on underline the dichotomy between competition and public broadcasting policy objectives

This report looks at the UK broadband and telephony market up to Q2 2009. The key trend is that the steep reduction in UK broadband net additions continued in Q2 2009, to 176,100

ITV reported a pre-tax loss of £14 million in H1 2009 as the advertising recession took a grip, with total TV NAR down an estimated 17% against H1 2008, while ITV family NAR fell year on year by 15%

Although visibility over future advertising spend is restricted to a couple of months, we expect significant further decline in total TV NAR over the remainder of 2009 and 2010, before recovery starts in 2011/12

Cost savings, debt-restructuring and disposal of non-core assets, including Friends Reunited and SDN, should see ITV through the worst and we expect it to benefit later on from regulatory changes to its core advertising business

Vodafone’s European revenue growth continued to slide, down to -4.4% in the June quarter from -3.3% last quarter, which itself was a sharp drop

A substantial element of this quarter’s decline was driven by an acceleration in termination rate cuts in Germany, but the general trend is weak volumes driven by a weak economy

With a substantial termination rate cut in the UK taken from 1st July, we expect growth to decline again in the September quarter, before stabilising/improving for the rest of the year

The distribution business experienced modest growth in connections and revenue, easily outpacing European market handset growth of -15%, as the company continues to build market share

At TalkTalk Group (TTG) net broadband additions for the quarter were relatively strong, given likely market growth, probably due at least in part to reduced subscriber loss at AOL UK

In our view cut-price business broadband, rather than IPTV, offers the best prospect of profitable revenue growth in fixed line

Vodafone (and others) are reported to be interested in acquiring T-Mobile in the UK, but any such merger would be likely to face significant barriers from regulatory authorities

This achievement would be moderated by ‘integration leakage’, i.e. increased churn caused by customers leaving who were initially attracted by an aspect of one of the operators that disappears after integration, but the net result should still be positive for the JV

The remaining UK operators will benefit both from this churn and the reduction in competitive intensity associated with five players dropping to four. While all the operators may win, UK consumers might lose, with regulatory clearance thus still far from certain