As we noted previously—despite the explosion in volume and access to content—long-form viewing is narrowing around fewer programmes

At the same time, younger viewers are watching a greater proportion of video alone, resulting in a growing schism between what is watched by young and older viewers

The upshot is a two-pronged escalation of pressure on content providers—trying to create a hit when long-form viewing is both declining and concentrating, while, by age at least, adult audience demand becomes increasingly binary

Streaming profitability beckons, but owes much to the profitable services folded into companies’ DTC segments alongside the headline streamers.

There is a broader move towards bundling and price rises. The former bolsters subscriber additions and lifetime value but is ARPU-dilutive, while price rises will bump up both ARPU and churn.

2024 marks the first year with multiple players at scale in the ad space, as Prime Video entered the market. Other streamers with high CPMs and lower scale may be forced to re-examine their offerings.

Meta's China risk is overstated: the spend from Chinese advertisers is diverse and resilient to everything short of a full-blown trade war. 

Apple (and Tesla) are in the more precarious position of selling directly in-market, and face sharpening domestic competition.

Amazon's exit from selling in China still leaves it exposed: its marketplace strategy is built on Chinese sellers, whose potential routes to market are proliferating with local platforms going global.  

The value of the domestic rights of major European leagues is falling due to the declining competitive intensity between broadcasters.

The Premier League’s new rights deal extends its lead, while Serie A faces a 10% fall in revenue next season and Ligue 1 struggles to get a flat fee.

Sky and DAZN have cemented their status as Europe’s top football broadcasters. Amazon has refocused to one game per week.

Book pricing has stagnated over the past two decades, leading to severe real-term declines in price per book. Nominal prices are now on the rise, but they are still swamped by inflation, and there is no prospect of them catching up to where they were.

The cost to produce books has been hit by many of the same inflationary conditions affecting companies (and people) across the board, leading to tough conditions at publishers, particularly small ones.

Fortunately, books offer many ways for publishers to price discriminate, charging more to price-insensitive, motivated readers.

In this report we show our analysis of trends in UK broadband and telephony to March 2012, based on the published results of the major service providers.

Highlights for the March quarter include broadband subscriptions exceeding 21 million, a sudden uptick in broadband market net additions and local loop unbundling accounting for a record 40% of broadband subscriptions. The proportion of unbundled lines that are fully unbundled exceeded two thirds for the first time.

This quarter we also include a look at pricing, including prices for high speed broadband that show how BT Retail is using high speed broadband to reduce the price advantage of its competitors.

Vodafone’s proposed acquisition of Cable & Wireless Worldwide is far from a done deal and is unlikely to be completed until September

The cost synergies are real but likely slim, with the main rationale being to cost effectively expand Vodafone’s fixed enterprise business in the UK, and to gain the expertise to do this elsewhere

The impact of an acquisition, while gradual, would reverberate for years to come. Wireline wholesalers, then corporate service retailers would be affected, notably BT. Later, the impact could spread to the small business segment. The prospect of Vodafone’s re-entry into the UK residential wireline market would remain distant but more likely

In this presentation we show our analysis of trends in UK broadband and telephony to December 2011, based on the published results of the major service providers.

Highlights for the December quarter include a return to the lower rate of broadband market growth seen prior to mid-2010, accelerating growth in the number of subscribers to high speed broadband and the continuing increase in market share of BT Retail and BSkyB at the expense of virtually all other players

This quarter’s edition includes a look at Openreach’s wholesale FTTP On Demand, planned for launch in 2013.

Following announcements by Virgin Media to double the speeds used by most cable customers, and by BSkyB to launch high speed broadband offer in April based on Openreach’s wholesale VDSL product, by 2016 we now expect about half of UK residential broadband subscribers to be on high speed broadband, i.e. xDSL or GPON at 30 Mbit/s plus, and DOCSIS at 20 Mbit/s plus

Cable & Wireless Worldwide’s new CEO Gavin Darby has outlined a turnaround strategy for a business which is not performing that badly in context, against the backdrop of Vodafone considering a bid to buy the company

Mr Darby’s strategy is yet to be finalised, but in outline contains lots of initiatives which are good in theory but hard to implement in practice, especially in a weak macroeconomic climate, in the face of intense competition

Integrating Vodafone UK’s mobile wireline backhaul and core networks with C&W WW’s UK network would yield slim synergies, as the most expensive part of Vodafone’s wireline network has little overlap with that of C&W WW

We think that Vodafone is more likely to be interested in using C&W WW to help sell integrated fixed-mobile products to corporate customers, and, to a lesser extent, SMEs. Whether the benefits will outweigh the significant integration headaches is something only Vodafone can decide

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