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.

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

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

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

The Digital Britain report’s proposed fixed line levy to fund rural NGA may well never become law, but if implemented, could end up being absorbed by the service providers, with a disproportionately negative impact on TalkTalk Group

The proposed Universal Service Commitment for broadband at 2 Mbit/s looks of limited attraction to potential bidders, but could increase the addressable market for retail broadband by about one million households

The proposed spectrum solution is a sensible compromise which ensures a roughly even playing field between mobile operators over the longer term. There is however still some way to go to implement it, with mid-2010 the best case timetable for the main auction of new spectrum, with this continued delay benefitting the incumbent mobile operators

Ofcom’s recent statement on LLU pricing has increased the amount which BT Openreach can charge unbundlers for full LLU over the next two years by about 8% overall

We estimate the changes will raise BT group EBITDA by less than 1% over the two years to March 2011

TalkTalk Group’s recent retail price increase is more than enough to offset the impact of Ofcom’s ruling on its annual EBITDA to March 2010, but the ruling could still take 5% off annual EBITDA to March 2011

Sky has yet to start mass migration to MPF and is more exposed to increases in the price of ancillary services, but less exposed to those for MPF rental. Sky’s annual residential telecoms EBITDA to March 2011 could be 10% lower, but this could be reduced if management takes the opportunity to increase the price of retail line rental

Carphone Warehouse’s distribution business had a slightly mixed year, with strong volumes and revenue mitigated by a sharp drop in margins and profit, with margin being sacrificed for market share

Given the very poor recession-hit market for handsets, Carphone Warehouse’s market share gains have been dramatic, so the sacrifice was at least not in vain

Although TalkTalk Group missed much of its guidance to March 2009, we now view new guidance as achievable, with the main risks related to the integration of Tiscali UK

The OFT has delivered its verdict on ITV’s request for a review and modification of the CRR remedy that the Competition Commission imposed as a condition of the Carlton/Granada merger in 2003

In delivering its verdict, the OFT has chosen to sit on the fence. After recognising both the merits of the ITV case and the continuing concerns of the advertising community it reiterated earlier recommendations for minor changes in keeping with the times, but otherwise left it to the CC to decide what changes to make

The complexity of the CRR remedy and the polarised views of parties involved, as well as the burden of decision-making transferred to the CC, merely confirm the view that any significant modification to CRR will be a long time in coming, and almost certainly long after the start of the 2010 trading season, as previously suggested by ITV