Piers Morgan provides the tentpole supporting TalkTV, a new channel devoted to personality-led news, current affairs and entertainment. Three hours of polished, primetime programming will build on TalkRADIO’s existing video output, drawing from across News UK’s stable of brands.

Increasing competition in opinionated news and discussion formats, as well as the harsh economic reality of producing TV news means TalkTV is unlikely to be profitable in the mid-term. There will be high up-front costs for a bigger share of voice in the UK media.

However, TalkTV will bring benefits to News UK’s wider portfolio, take advantage of the news genres’ relative resilience in a robust TV ad market and provide high-quality video content that is now an inevitable part of being a multimedia news organisation.

Broadcast TV viewing resumed its downwards trajectory in 2021, following a pandemic-inflated boost in 2020. The effect has been compounded by streaming services retaining much of their lockdown gains, consolidating their place at the heart of people's viewing habits

Within the shrinking pie of broadcast TV viewing—still c.70% of total TV set use—the PSBs have held relatively steady, whilst Channel 5 has increased both its share and absolute volume of viewing

However, further decline seems inevitable, with the largest components of the programming landscape, namely longstanding formats and the soaps suffering badly since the beginning of the pandemic. We await the effect of various new scheduling strategies

BT has entered exclusive discussions with Discovery to fold BT Sport into a joint venture including the UK version of Eurosport, ending sale discussions with DAZN

The upgraded sports service will allow Discovery—soon merging with WarnerMedia—to considerably boost its content line-up in a genre where rivals Disney and Netflix are absent

The ecosystem—the Premier League, UEFA, and Sky—will likely welcome the deal

Netflix’s decision to launch games as part of the subscription bundle is smart business: rewarding current subscribers, leveraging its IP, and signalling that subscription is the best long-term revenue model in the games space. 

Expect technological innovation to be central to Netflix’s ambitions with games. Netflix will make it easier for different game experiences to occur, and ways to attract external developers will inevitably follow. 

For Disney, Netflix just made the battle for customers more difficult and more expensive.  Disney will need to make hard decisions about how to approach the games business—something it has shown before it finds difficult to do. 

Epic Games, maker of mega-hit Fortnite, sued Apple over alleged antitrust violations around App Store rules and Apple’s 30% tax on in-app transactions. A decision could come soon, though it will be contested on appeal.

The implications of the case could be far-reaching, as Apple and other tech companies like Google design their platforms to extract high-margin revenue from the transactions they facilitate, including news subscriptions: a five-year basic in-app subscription to The Times costs £885, of which Apple takes £158. 

It comes in the context of a flurry of debate and decisions around tech antitrust and consumer protection: new laws may ultimately be needed, but regulators in the US and UK are proving they can be creative with their existing tools. 

The Premier League is reportedly seeking to roll over its existing domestic TV rights deal, in a bid to shore up its financial position given its losses during the pandemic.

A rollover would delay the risk of significant long-term deflation in the value of these rights, buying the Premier League greater financial certainty and time.

For Sky, BT and Amazon, a deal could provide even better value, and would delay any potentially-risky auction, closing the door to prospective newcomers.

A move away from premium sport is long overdue from BT, with there having proved to be little strategic, 'halo' or other cross-over benefit to its core broadband and mobile businesses.

BT Sport has managed to dramatically increase its pricing since launch, with little evidence of significant net subscriber leakage, which has driven 'standalone' profitability and allows a partial or full sale.

A sale would not likely cover BT's full losses to date, but a partner could enhance the value of the asset, and an eventual full sale would reduce risk for BT and enable it to fully focus on its broadband and mobile core businesses.

Debt-ridden ‘insurgent’ clubs seek salvation in golden combination of control of the competition, end of relegation and new financing sources.

The Super League amounts to a hostile takeover bid for the Champions League.

The project’s impact on the value of broadcasting rights could be somewhere between neutral and negative. The Premier League and Ligue 1 auctions could hardly be held under the current uncertain climate.

Despite relying on a narrow IP base, US content production is booming, overwhelming other markets and seeking alternative distribution to cinema.

Responding to the rise of Netflix and Amazon Prime, studios seek to shift distribution from wholesale to retail—but only Disney may succeed.

Most content is likely to remain accessed by consumers through bundles. Provided they engage with aggregation, European broadcasters can adjust to the new studio model.

Despite linear TV viewing benefiting from recent lockdowns, across 2020 it still declined among younger audiences. Online video habits have solidified, most notably for adults in their 30s and 40s

As a result, traditional broadcasters are more vulnerable now than ever before. Long term, we forecast their audiences to fall further than previously expected—down to 61% of all video viewing in 2027 from 72% today—as streaming platforms make ever-deeper inroads

Given linear TV’s reliance on older cohorts, plus an ageing UK population, we predict that two-thirds of traditional broadcasters’ viewing in 2027 will come from over-55s, with less than 13% from under-35s