Kangaroo, the BBC/ITV/Channel 4 VOD project, looks unlikely to see the light of day any time soon, based on the Competition Commission’s (CC) provisional findings announced on 3rd December

 

 

 

The consultation period for the second phase of Ofcom’s Second Public Service Broadcasting Review closes on 4th December 2008. The central issue before Ofcom is that the current PSB model is broken, lacking the flexibility to “adapt to audiences’ evolving needs”. The primary concern lies with the commercial sector, which is under increasing strain to deliver its PSB commitments due to structural changes in the television medium that have been compounded by the present economic crisis. This presentation sets out our views about the role of structural changes in restraining TV net advertising revenues (NAR) growth in recent years along with our latest TV forecasts to 2013. Whilst some of the current downward pressures on TV NAR may be expected to ease, a new structural change that threatens the commercial PSB sector is the growing chasm between BBC investment in its PSB services and the advertising revenues of ITV, Channel 4 and Five

 

 

 

Vodafone’s European organic service revenue growth dropped again in the September quarter, to -1.3%, and we estimate that it continues to underperform its competitors’ growth by two percentage points, thus losing market share. Margins also fell, as the company’s cost reduction measures continue to fail to stop costs rising

Channel 4 has announced the immediate withdrawal of its majority stake in 4 Digital Group, a new venture that was awarded the licence by Ofcom in 2007 to build the UK’s second national commercial radio DAB multiplex, and Channel 4 will not be launching its promised portfolio of broadcast radio channels

The obvious culprit is the weak economy, with mobile telecoms seeming to be more vulnerable to consumer cutbacks than previously thought, a hypothesis supported by recent consumer research

With European economic growth forecast to decline further, revenue growth is likely to drop below zero by the beginning of 2009, and then progressively worsen through 2009 as regulatory effects worsen, creating a very tough environment for mobile operators to preserve margins