While Sky’s overall revenues continue to rise, Q3’s growth was hampered by a significant fall in advertising revenue and to a lesser extent a slowdown in content sales

Underlying EBITDA growth was in the mid-teens. Next quarter, Sky will continue to benefit from lower Premier League rights costs versus last season, and profit appears on track to meet full year guidance

Q3 saw a rare decline in Sky’s total number of customers due to the conclusion of Game of Thrones. Sky clearly understands the value of unique content—recently extending its HBO deal. In our view, this was essential, since without a distribution deal for Disney+ (launching in the UK in March) Sky would lose Disney’s alluring content

New SVOD entrants are prioritising reach over revenue in the US with extensive ‘free’ offers, including Apple TV+ (to hardware buyers), Disney+ (to Verizon customers), HBO Max (to HBO subscribers) and Comcast’s Peacock (to basic cable homes)

This is the latest development in an unfolding global story of partnerships, continuing on from multiple Netflix and Amazon distribution deals with platforms, bringing benefits to both parties

In Europe, Sky faces price pressure, but it has secured its HBO partnership and can now talk to Disney from a position of strength

The average cover price of national newspapers has risen by 58% since 2010, more than twice the CPI increase of 22%. Are publishers “shooting themselves in the foot” at a time when buyers and advertisers are defecting to online?

To settle this, we analysed all the cover price events by national titles between 2010 and 2018, which reveals the relative success of The Times when it has raised its price.

For mid-market and popular titles, cover price hikes have on balance reduced circulation revenues and, by lowering reach, drained advertising revenue: a lose-lose scenario.

Cable &Wireless Worldwide’s performance for the six months to September was weak but made to look worse by one-offs

Underlying performance continues to be hit by strong competition and loss of voice revenue, but the impact of this has been made worse by underinvestment in data centres and neglect of the wholesale and SME businesses

The outlook for the year to March 2012 is poor, in line with the June warning. Beyond that, further investment in hosting and related capabilities will be necessary, and we continue to expect modest growth

National newspaper circulation continued its inexorable decline in September, with daily circulation down 7% year-on-year, although we estimate retail sales value decline was marginal

Sunday popular and mid-market newspaper circulation fell 4% month-on-month, as News of the World buyers continue to drop out of the market; we estimate around a third of ex-readers have not migrated to another title

Publishers are responding to circulation decline in a variety of ways, from churning out bulks to maintain scale, to increasing cover prices, axing international editions and developing their subscriber base

Openreach has announced large cuts in the prices of some important components of physical infrastructure access (PIA). A further substantial reduction in duct prices is possible as a result of an adjustment by Ofcom to Openreach’s regulatory asset value (RAV)

The reductions are helpful to the economics of bids by altnets such as Fujitsu for government funds to deploy rural next generation access (NGA), and to Virgin Media, as it expands its existing cable network footprint

However, the economics of NGA continue to strike us as challenging and we expect the impact of PIA on BT to be modest due to the remaining potential wholesale revenue, and BT Retail’s ability to use third party PIA-based networks

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) judgment in the Portsmouth pub landlady case looks to have opened the door to legitimising the private or domestic use of decoders to watch premium sports and other pay-TV content outside the territories for which they were licensed

The outcome could prove to be a significant commercial opportunity for Sky to expand its overseas distribution among residential customers, but an extra test for the Football Association Premier League (PL) as it designs the next round of contracts with a view to at least maintaining current revenues

The ECJ judgment is more ambiguous over the question of public screenings for commercial purposes against the wishes of the right holders and the conclusion appears some way off

In the context of his Inquiry, Lord Leveson invited Claire Enders, as “one of the UK’s foremost media business analysts”, to kick off the seminar series on the 6 October with a synoptic presentation on “Competitive pressures on the press”. The Inquiry is interested in understanding the market economics of the mainstream media, including the impact of technology

This presentation brings together our existing work on the newspaper and consumer magazines industry, with an emphasis on the former, highlighting the challenges to the print media of the internet

A video transcript of Claire’s presentation and the debate on the session’s subject of “Competitive pressures on the press and the pressures on journalism”, may be accessed on the site of the Leveson inquiry, at www.levesoninquiry.org.uk

Fiscal 2011 was a vintage year for Sky, which reported a 23% growth in operating profit and 51% increase in free cash flow as it started to reap the full benefits of its investment in multi-product growth

Q4 2011 showed signs that tougher economic conditions are starting to bite, although the sharp fall in TV product additions was balanced by a fourth consecutive bumper quarter in home communications, in which Sky outperformed the rest of the market

Strong focus on operating efficiencies and product innovation combined with big investment in UK originated content should position the company well as competitive pressures build in the medium- to long-term, at the same time as allowing continuing strong profit growth

Trinity Mirror, Northern & Shell and DMGT helped the market more or less offset the absence of the News of the World, though impressive volumes have come at a price

More generally, newspaper circulations have a temporary reprieve, as strong newsflow but also discounts and marketing techniques have been deployed to attract readers

What happens next at News International, and also competitor responses, could soon change market dynamics again