Using a little understood provision of the merger rules, the government has asked Ofcom to take a look at the Sky stake in ITV, just in case the OFT did not come up with the right answer the first time round. As a result of the intervention, Ofcom will decide whether the share purchase reduced the number of separately managed broadcasters in the UK. Since this is almost exactly what the OFT is already doing, it is impossible to see how Ofcom could reach a different conclusion to the OFT. In this sense, the intervention has little point

Television's old world of analogue scarcity produced a clutch of big names in free-to-air (FTA) commercial broadcasting: ITV1, TF1, Mediaset, RTL and Sat.1/Pro7 being among the most prominent in Europe - companies grown rich and powerful through advertising demand and lack of competition. Today, they face the common challenge of making a successful transition into the new world of digital plenty. Can they prosper? Or must they disappear like dinosaurs in a whirl of audience fragmentation, ad avoidance, on demand, downloading, video-streaming, convergence, piracy and whatever else the future holds?

The new UK management team, led by former Energis CEO John Pluthero, still has the opportunity to improve C&W UK’s longer-term position

Rapid implementation of a Next Generation Network to cut costs and refocusing Bulldog remain critical

Ofcom will announce at the end of June the new terms for ITV to operate the analogue portion of its broadcast licence for ITV1. According to Ofcom's own statements, it is obliged to estimate the full value of ITV’s operation of the analogue ITV1 service and then extract all this value – bar some profit and other small allowances – in the form of annual licence payments. To do so, Ofcom has announced a methodology based on what the winning broadcaster would bid in a hypothetical competitive tender. In order to estimate the licence payments, analysts must grapple with the highly complex tasks of inferring the model from Ofcom's description and establishing the inputs.

An eventual merger is possible but difficult, especially given Hutchison Whampoa’s inflated view of H3G Italia’s value, considering it worth about the same as Wind itself, which is double the size and actually makes a profit (unlike H3G Italia)

Nonetheless, this does create a possible exit should H3G Italia’s planned Q1 2006 IPO fail, with the consolidation likely to benefit all players in the Italian market. H3G UK does not enjoy such an option, and is struggling more on a stand-alone basis to boot