After a protracted offer period, Scottish Media Group has finally sold its national commercial radio business ‘Virgin Radio’ to Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited for £53.2 million cash. The sale does not include the licence to continue using the brand name from the Virgin Group, so the station will be re-branded and re-launched by its new owner in autumn 2008. This report argues that, although the value of Virgin Radio’s main AM analogue platform is diminishing, the value of the accompanying FM licence in London could be significantly increased by the execution of a successful turnaround strategy. The London licence alone could reflect the price paid for the whole business, if the station’s rock music programming were to be made more relevant to consumers and advertisers in the capital

To encourage investors, TF1 announced continued diversification of group revenues from reliance on the flagship TF1 channel, and an increase in group Ebitda from 16% in 2007 to 20% in ‘4-5 years’. Accelerating audience share decline at the TF1 channel indicates that new programming is also urgently required to maintain TF1’s ‘premium’ for advertisers