Having acquired national broadcast TV rights for premium content, France Télécom’s Orange TV will launch on satellite on 3rd July and introduce subscription football and film and series services from August, in a first for a major European telecoms incumbent

Canal+ is entering a critical phase of growth following the recent merger with its former rival Télévision Par Satellite (TPS). Vivendi has set short term guidance targets for 2010 of 11.5 million subscriptions, turnover above €5 billion and more than doubling of EBITA from €490 million to over €1 billion. This presentation examines these targets and concludes that Canal+ will fall short of all them. In the best case baseline scenario of least competition from other pay-TV and free-to-air (FTA) services, it projects EBITA in 2010 of just €890 million

The worsening economic outlook has caused us to lower our forecasts of TV net advertising revenue (NAR) growth in 2008 to -2.5%, although there is still little visibility beyond H1, which is expected to register -1% growth

The BBC-ITV Freesat venture, launched on 6th May, is the public service response to Sky’s free satellite service. Once fully up and running in 2009, Freesat aims to match Sky with 200 digital TV channels in standard definition (SD), and surpass Sky with extra channels in High Definition (HD), plus the facility to offer iPlayer and Kangaroo

Disappointing headline figures showing a 35% drop in pre-tax profits largely reflect exceptional and non-core items, in particular the fallout from the phone-in scandals that occurred in 2007

This report examines whether Sky has grounds to appeal the decision by the Competition Commission requiring Sky to partly divest its ITV stake. The deadline for Sky's decision on appeal is 25th February. Bearing in mind that the CC has a good track record on fighting appeals, this report identifies two potential grounds for appeal that could prove fruitful for Sky to appeal. If Sky does appeal, and we suspect it will, the uncertainty weighing on ITV's share price will continue for some time yet

ITV plc set itself the annual target of 3-5% revenue growth up to 2010, then 5% to 2012, in its strategy presentation on September 12th 2007. Within the overall business growth target, ITV set itself a further three sub-targets. Two of these, the doubling of production revenues (currently in the region of £600 million per annum) by 2012 and the fivefold increase in online revenues from about £30 million in 2007 to £150 million in 2010 raised a good few eyebrows to judge by reactions afterwards; but the third target of 38.5% adult SOCI (share of commercial impacts, or ‘eyeballs delivered to advertisers’) by 2012 has drawn almost no attention

BSkyB’s 17.9% shareholding in ITV is likely to lead to a substantial lessening of competition in the all-TV market, according to the provisional findings of the Competition Commission (CC) investigation announced on 2nd October 2007

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has confirmed receipt of a formal request from ITV plc for a review of the Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) remedy and will announce its decision whether to proceed before the year is over

On 27th July the BBC will open access to the iPlayer to UK internet users, en route to a hard launch later this summer. This PC-based application allows the user to download BBC TV content after broadcast to view on the PC for a limited time, and provides a TV-like display on the PC. Delays to the launch will mean the iPlayer enters a field already crowded by other broadcasters, including Channel 4's 4oD service, ITV's broadband portal, Sky Anytime, as well as content aggregators such as Joost and Babelgum (both currently in beta)