Prisa, the 98% owner of Sogecable, has put Spain’s leading pay-TV platform Digital+ up for sale in order to make a large reduction in its debts
ITV interim results for 2008 confirmed expectations of a sharp downturn in H1 profits combined with dire predictions for net advertising revenues in the second half of the year, although ITV has so far succeeded in outperforming the rest of the commercial sector in 2008
Carphone Warehouse had a solid quarter on the distribution side given the current environment, with 6-7% underlying organic retail growth and roughly stable like-for-like figures
Project Kangaroo, the planned joint venture between BBC Worldwide, ITV and C4 to pool archival resources and supply video-on-demand (VOD) to UK retail and wholesale customers, was referred by the Office of Fair Trading to the Competition Commission on 30th June
This report explains Ofcom’s ongoing review of Openreach’s financial framework, why it is important, the myriad factors involved, our view on the likely outcome and the implications for BT and unbundlers, in particular Carphone Warehouse and BSkyB
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
Carphone Warehouse had a solid quarter, and its expectation of a currency-aided 9-10% growth rate in 2008/2009 distribution revenue looks achievable, as does guidance of 4-5% growth in fixed line revenue, unless loss of telephony-only customers accelerates
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
Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo! represents the software giant’s last opportunity to compete with Google in the rapidly growing market for online advertising, which is forecast to double to $80 billion within three years