RedBird IMI will sell its claim to own the Telegraph Media Group (TMG) due to the public interest test it was set to fail, with the Spectator also back on the block
TMG surpassed a declared goal of 1 million subscribers by the end of 2023, motivating our forecast of 4% revenue growth for FY2023 to reach £265 million
The buyer of the Telegraph is likely to face an intervention on public interest grounds from the Secretary of State—a hurdle that could dissuade many bidders
TikTok has been dealt a devastating blow as a US bill has been signed into law forcing owner ByteDance to sell within a year or face its removal from app stores.
The stakes are higher than in 2020—China's opposition to a divestment will make an optimal sale harder to conclude, so all sides must be prepared for a ban.
The TikTok bill introduces extraordinary new powers in the context of the US and China's broad systemic rivalry, though online consumer benefits will be limited.
Big news publishers are pursuing licensing deals with AI companies, chiefly OpenAI. Not all publishers will see a substantial return; while some news may be important for training AI models, not all publisher content will be.
Litigation is a threat point when negotiations stall (see the New York Times), but the copyright status of Large Language Models (LLMs) is uncertain. In the UK, there has been no government intervention (on copyright or otherwise) that could facilitate licensing.
Publishers’ bargaining position is strongest when it comes to up-to-date material that could be important in powering some AI consumer products. They should seek deals to support their journalism, while bearing in mind the risk that new products may get between them and their readers.
The Government will enact a new ban on foreign states acquiring UK print news media, forcing Redbird IMI to end its pursuit of Telegraph Media Group (TMG).
The new law adds a further criterion to the regulatory scrutiny of media mergers on competition and public interest grounds, but there remain questions about its scope.
The new law will collide with the completion of Phase 1 of the regulatory process on public interest grounds by the Secretary of State (SoS), unless RedBird IMI surrenders.
A new UK corporate structure for RedBird IMI to own the Telegraph and Spectator has sparked a second regulatory intervention on public interest grounds, which has set back the deadline for Phase 1 advice from Ofcom and the CMA to 11 March.
Even without the frenzy of opposition to the merger of RedBird IMI and TMG, a like-for-like comparison with the corporate structure of the Evening Standard highlights several concerns that could arise in Ofcom’s PIT.
The Secretary of State Lucy Frazer will certainly prefer to refer the merger to the CMA for an in-depth Phase 2 investigation in view of the scale of public interest concerns, despite undertakings offered by RedBird IMI.
The quest for sustainability in the UK national news industry is gaining ground, thanks to digital growth offsetting relentless print decline. The challenge of the print-to-digital transition has not faded, however, amidst the oncoming cliff-edge for print.
Nationals choosing the path of the walled garden on digital have out-performed those in pursuit of the ad-supported mass-market audience, whose ad yield per user is being compressed by more efficient scale platforms and the end of tracking technology.
Despite the challenges facing the news industry, the beacon of light shone by professional journalism has never been more important to humanity, to combat disinformation and misinformation on the internet, which Gen AI tools will only exacerbate.
This report is free to access
Lockdown 1.0 in March-April-May 2020 reduced mobility in London to 65% of its pre-pandemic baseline, swelling time spent at home. London’s mobility tracked a similar decline to Paris and New York City, all hugely reliant on public transport
Easing lockdowns and good weather slowly led to a mobility recovery through the summer and early autumn, but it sharply declined again after November’s Lockdown 2.0. The mobility decline was greatest in the City of London, which is more acutely affected by working from home
Each nation in the UK diverged slightly from September due to varying local policies adopted by England, Wales and Scotland to address their public health crises. Notably however, Lockdown 2.0 did not cause mobility to fall to the same degree as late March
The US Department of Justice antitrust case against Google alleges an illegal monopoly in search and search advertising in their home and largest market.
The lawsuit targets Google's control of the Android mobile operating system and exclusive revenue share agreement with Apple, which the EU prohibited in 2018, a decision that Google has appealed.
Alongside antitrust enforcement, legislative initiatives in the EU and UK will create an ex ante antitrust framework for relations between “gatekeeper” platforms and their users and customers, which the US Congress has yet to emulate.
On 1 October, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced $1 billion for worldwide news publisher partnerships for a novel News Showcase product, helping them to distribute their content to a new audience.
It is an important milestone: for the first time Google will pay publishers to curate content in the Google News app (initially), and to provide unpaywalled access to articles on publishers’ websites that users can click through to.
In so doing, Google is defusing the simmering conflict with publishers in major markets, and showing policy-makers its willingness to collaborate with a news industry facing existential threats.
This report is free to access.
Female-led and equally-led employers numbered 550,000 in the UK in 2019, a 40% share of 1.4 million businesses. These are often sub-scale businesses requiring financial and digital skills to scale up.
Female-led businesses cluster in education, health, food and accommodation, the latter being highly exposed to the pandemic. The more protected and dynamic ICT sector has low female engagement, which higher levels of study of STEM subjects will remedy.
Consumers are embracing digital to live and work through the pandemic. Enterprises that are digital and digitally-enabled will survive and flourish, supported by initiatives from Google, Facebook and others.