France’s Orange Sport closed last month after France Télécom declined to bid for a renewal of its four-year licence to broadcast Ligue 1 football. The future of its sister film channel, Orange Cinéma Séries, remains unclear.

The strategic aim for Orange Sport was confused from the start – standalone profit centre or loss leader, fully fledged alternative to Canal+ or add-on to it.

Orange’s premium TV project was a failure: we estimate its cumulative losses at €1.2 billion, while Orange’s broadband market share and retail price premium shrank during the four years of its operation. But it did arguably strengthen Orange’s hand in carriage negotiations with Canal+.

In this presentation we show our analysis of revenue growth trends for mobile operators in the top five European markets (UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain). The historical analysis is based on the published results of the operators, although they include our estimates where their data is inconsistent or not complete. A copy of the underlying data in spreadsheet format is available to our subscription clients on request.

France’s sole cable operator, the smallest of the country’s five broadband providers, is sub-scale on the retail market and the heavy cost of servicing its debt leaves only meagre resources to leverage its superior network commercially

However, thanks to its white label deal with Bouygues, Numericable has resumed revenue growth and should achieve its 2014 debt/EBITDA target

As France Télécom’s network upgrade to fibre progresses, the main upside for Numericable lies in a closer alliance with Bouygues and possibly other DSL providers

Iliad accelerated fixed line subscriber recruitment in 2011 thanks to a substantial increase in capital expenditure on its Révolution box, shrinking its cash flow margin

Iliad’s margin should recover somewhat in 2012 thanks to decreasing box prices. Fibre deployment is being scaled back due to weak demand

Mobile operating losses may be modest this year, but we expect pressure will build up in 2013 as network running costs rise and the termination rate asymmetry drops out

We forecast print media advertising will be down by about 4% in 2012, with national newspaper display roughly flat, performances we envisage will be seen as a temporary reprieve once the substantially tougher 2013 that we expect to follow is underway

Print media is not out of the structural woods, and even relatively small revenue contraction will amplify pain as the opportunities for further streamlining fixed-cost physical distribution operations are realistically diminishing

Digital is a greater challenge for paper than for screen media, as consumer and advertiser demand continues to weaken, yet publishers struggle to generate the killer service solution to stimulate scale revenue online

The launch of the fourth mobile network operator in France has so far met with dramatic success, gaining around 1.5 million subscribers in the first month, driven by rock-bottom pricing and a clever mass media PR campaign

Its tariffs are, however, so low that it is very hard to see how they are sustainable in the longer term. In the short term, Free’s economics are boosted by asymmetric voice and text termination rates that result in other operators’ customers effectively subsidising Free subscribers by €5 to €10 a month

This arbitrage is very likely to disappear over the next two years, but Free Mobile can increase its prices when this occurs. Its challenge will be to acquire a critical mass of subscribers before this point, and to retain them thereafter

News International is to launch the Sun on Sunday on 26 February, seven months after closing the News of the World

In the intervening period, Trinity Mirror has picked up the bulk of the 55% of NoW copies that have not entirely fallen out of the market since June 2011

The £150 million revenue once generated by NoW is diminished and dispersed among rival publishers and we estimate that even a triumphant launch would likely generate half to two thirds of the income of the closed title

Enders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference, in conjunction with BNP Paribas and Deloitte, in London on 19 January 2012. The event featured talks by 13 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette. An edited transcript of notes taken during the speaker presentations follows.

The speakers were Sir Martin Sorrell (CEO, WPP), Glen Moreno (Chairman, Pearson), Martin Morgan (CEO, DMGT), David Levin (CEO, UBM), Dan Cobley (MD, Google UK & Ireland), Mike Pocock (CEO, Yell), Vittorio Colao (CEO, Vodafone), Charles Dunstone (Chairman, Carphone Warehouse, TalkTalk Group), Stephen Carter (President, Alcatel-Lucent EMEA), the Rt. Hon. Jeremy Hunt MP (Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport), Neil Berkett (CEO, Virgin Media), Liv Garfield (CEO, Openreach) and Ed Richards (CEO, Ofcom).

Rumours that News International will consider launching a newspaper to replace the News of the World have circulated for months, and probably only one event can dispel them

Trinity Mirror has picked up the bulk of the 60% of NoW copies that have not entirely fallen out of the market since June 2011, and arguably the longer any launch is delayed the harder it will be for NI to attract them back

The £150 million revenue once generated by NoW is diminished and dispersed among rival publishers and we estimate that even a triumphant launch would likely generate half to two thirds of the income of the closed title