News International’s decision to raise the price of the Sun on Sunday is partly a result of it being seriously under-priced since launch and partly a signal of a broader strategic focus at News International and press generally

With digital revenues not scaling as publishers had hoped and with print advertising continuing its structural decline, newspaper and magazine publishers are finding success with the oldest trick in the book: increasing cover prices to drive up income

Publishers are realising that circulation decline is accelerating anyway and price increases appear to constitute only a marginal additional loss. It no longer makes sense to undervalue the product

Sky Deutschland is reaping the benefits of its re-launch using BSkyB’s model, with an improving content offering and quality of user experience, plus a favourable environment for household consumption in Germany.

2012 results came in very close to our forecasts and we predict that Sky Deutschland will break even at EBITDA level in 2013 and turn cash flow positive in 2015.

The competitive context is benign and the horizon is clear until the next Bundesliga auction in 2016. But, in the meantime, cable, IPTV, FTA and OTT players are committed to widening their pay offers, which may put pressure on Sky’s subscriber growth and content costs.

German unbundlers are in decline, unable to match cable for price or bandwidth, or to invest in new fibre networks. Vodafone, the second largest unbundler, must choose between consolidating and divesting Merging with Kabel Deutschland would deliver fixed line synergies – with high execution risks. But, based on the French and Spanish experiences, we doubt that a quad play strategy (synonymous with a price war) would generate value Mobile operators’ fixed line ventures are also in decline elsewhere in Europe, but cable is not always to blame, with pure play fixed line altnets also tending to outperform them, suggesting that genuine cross-selling advantages are marginal at best

On 29 November, the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press finally issued its report. Its verdicts on the conduct of the press, politicians and police were less severe than expected.

The three main political parties have accepted most of the report’s recommendations, but have disagreed over the use of statute. As expected, the Conservatives are against, while Labour and the Lib Dems are in favour.

Subsequent cross-party talks and negotiations between editors have so far failed to produce agreement, with the process only becoming more opaque as time goes on. The shape of the future regulatory system remains uncertain.

European mobile market service revenue growth dropped again in Q3, by 1.9ppts to -6.2%. This was not helped by a substantial increase in the MTR impact, driven by a big cut in Italy, but underlying revenue growth still fell by 1.3ppts In stark contrast to Europe, the US mobile market continues to grow apace, with there being over 10ppts between the growth rates of the two regions. The most obvious difference between the markets is the very much higher levels of capex spent by the US incumbents, which drives their superior network quality and coverage, and hence price premia, and hence superior growth The European incumbents have not (yet) used their greater ability to spend on capex to increase the spending gap with smaller operators, with 4G launches (mostly) being low profile with low initial coverage (the UK being a notable exception to this). While this is an understandable approach given the prevailing macroeconomic conditions, it does mean that closing the growth gap with the US remains a distant prospect

News Corporation’s Fox is to acquire a controlling stake in the Eredivisie Live pay-TV channel, which holds long-term rights to the top football league in The Netherlands.

The guarantees that Fox will give to the league imply that revenues will more than double over the twelve years from 2013-14. Although we see growth potential in the historically underdeveloped Dutch pay-TV market, this looks challenging.

Eredivisie Live operates in a wholesale market, making it very difficult to replicate the Sky platform model. The rationale for the deal appears instead to lie in an effort by Fox to opportunistically strengthen its global portfolio of sports channels.

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.

News Corp will split publishing out of its business by creating a company to include newspapers in the US, UK and Australia as well as book publisher HarperCollins News Corp revenue growth has for some time been driven by explosive growth in cable network programming revenues, with slower revenue growth in film, TV, satellite TV and publishing The structural decline of print-based businesses is the main reason cited for the split. However, the Dow Jones and WSJ, both serving a B2B market, will be at the heart of the new publishing company’s value

The New York Times has generated $243 million from its digital services in the four quarters since the launch of its new subscription strategy, representing about 15% of New York Times Media Group revenues, according to our estimates.

This scale is the clearest signal yet that digital-only newsrooms could be able to generate enough revenue to fund expensive breadth and depth in journalism – though there will be many fewer profitable scale players than in the print news era.

Meanwhile, bundling digital and print subscriptions has helped the New York Times develop an integrated and valued approach to consumer service provision, and in so doing has mitigated print circulation decline, at least for now.

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.