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BBC proposals for local media set out on 7 September offer solutions to an alleged market failure, without much evidence, contained in February’s Future of News report.

There is no dispute that local commercial print and online media operations have suffered heavy revenue losses since their peak a decade ago – the industry is, however, still profitable, innovation and online growth are helping to stabilise the top-line, and new enterprises are emerging.

Local media publishers prefer a turbo-charged BBC policy of linking to their sites to the proposal for a local media digital hub fed by publishers and 100 BBC journalists.

News Corp’s original bid for full ownership of BSkyB was withdrawn because of the phone hacking scandal. It was never blocked by regulators. Had it not been for the scandal, the bid would almost certainly have been approved.

With the phone hacking scandal fallout largely over and the election of a friendly government, the climate is now much more favourable to a renewed bid. With undertakings, we believe it would be approved by regulators.

The increasingly global scale of TV and film distribution means the commercial case for the bid is, if anything, stronger now than in 2010. The questions are simply whether the right price can be agreed, and how high up it is on James Murdoch’s list of priorities.

BT will soon for the first time charge the majority of viewers for their own channels with the launch of the BT Sport Pack. The Pack includes BT Sport Europe, exclusive home to UEFA’s European football tournaments from this August, the rights to which BT are paying £299 million a year.

Viewing figures for the big European tournaments are not as high as one might expect given their prominence. Consumer demand for the new channel will also be highly dependent on the success of British teams, notably lacking in recent seasons.

We therefore do not expect a dramatic impact on BT Sport (or BT broadband) subscribers, and the widening losses will put pressure on BT’s margin squeeze test regulation, although they are easily absorbable at BT Group level.

News has entered a new phase, defined by the disruptive forces of mobile, social media and video, effecting rapid changes in consumption and the underlying economics for news businesses: the level of change and innovation is rewiring the structure and financial models for news more quickly than many news providers are able to respond. While charging for news looks to be a successful route for some brands, we note that the scale of charging for the industry is substantially smaller than in print. Apart from this, three models are gathering traction: selling audience engagement; selling news services; and selling news to businesses. Each of these options involves very different strategies and opposing objectives which can only be pursued at the same time by those with the deepest pockets. Everyone else has to choose.