Spain’s free-to-air (FTA) television advertising recovery may stall in H2 2010, but growth at Telecinco and Antena3 will remain vigorous due to the end of airtime sales on state-owned Televisión Española (TVE)

The two broadcasters have a strong, resilient model, with a high share of cheap, in-house programming, improved pricing power due to consolidation and large multichannel capacity on the digital terrestrial television (DTT) platform (analogue was switched off in April)

Telecinco will leverage its merger with Cuatro (due by end 2010) for economies of scale, but the benefit of its investment in pay-TV platform Digital+ is uncertain. Further consolidation involving laSexta is expected

FT has put majority stakes in Orange Sport and Orange Cinéma Séries on the block, and claims to have held discussions with News Corp. We think it unlikely that an investor would be interested in entering the French pay-TV market, dominated by Vivendi’s Canal+

We believe FT could find a buyer for Orange Sport in Disney’s ESPN, which could prove viable if a cross-retailing deal is reached with Canal+. A Eurosport merger is another option. Orange Cinéma Séries could be viable under a new owner, if it widens it distribution to other platforms

Now officially on the way out of the pay-TV production business, a welcome decision in our view, Orange can focus on improving the consumer value of the basic TV offering on the triple play marketplace

BT’s launch of Sky Sports should help reduce customer churn to Sky and other competitors, although we expect the extent of ‘win back’ to be modest

The financial impact on BT should be positive but of limited significance at group level due to the negative margin involved on the Sky Sports element of the bundle

Sky is likely to deploy a number of countermeasures that may negate some of the benefits to BT

News Corp’s bid for the shares it does not own in BSkyB is unlikely to generate much concern at the OFT because newspapers and TV will be seen as being in separate markets

But, separately, the Secretary of State for Business, Vince Cable, is entitled to make a ‘public interest’ intervention that requires the plurality issue to be assessed alongside the competition investigation over the next few weeks

We think that there is a strong case that the transaction does raise substantial issues of ‘plurality’ as defined in the Court of Appeal judgment on the purchase of ITV shares by BSkyB in 2006.1 Whether the new Secretary of State has the stomach for a fight with the company must be open to substantial doubt

Launching in the US this autumn, with international rollout due in 2011, Google TV uses enhanced versions of the Android mobile OS and Chrome browser to deliver full access to the internet via ‘Smart TV’ sets and devices

Google TV extends the company’s vision of the open internet to the living room, beyond the PC and mobile, where internet-enabled TV sets will take increasing share, raising search revenues, with potential to take a piece of the $150 billion global TV ad market

Pay TV platform operators’ are unlikely to embrace Google TV to avoid cannibalising their own business models, limiting adoption to free-to-air TV homes, at least initially, and direct revenues are likely to be slow to develop

Subject to BBC Trust approval, Canvas looks almost certain to launch in spring 2011 after the OFT decided that it did not have the jurisdiction to review Canvas under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002. The OFT decision does not rule out complaints on other grounds, but the chances of persuading the regulators look very small

The launch of Canvas promises to strengthen significantly the free-to-air digital terrestrial platform, otherwise very limited compared with satellite and cable platforms in terms of bandwidth, but mass adoption poses numerous challenges and it is open to question whether Canvas will ever extend to more than half the DTT base

In the long term, it is hard not to see Canvas as an interim step in the growing convergence between the TV screen and the internet, raising the question of how successfully its PSB TV-centric approach can adapt to the coming challenges of the full blown digital age

Sky Q3 2010 adjusted revenues showed strong year-on-year growth of around ten percent in the year to date (10.7%), and in the third quarter (11.1%), marked by strong product sales into its existing subscriber base, especially in HD, but also solid progress in broadband, telephony and line rental

The rise in revenues was more than matched by a rise in costs (up 11.7% in the first nine months); however, this was largely accounted for by a one-off rise in programming costs in the wake of Setanta’s departure in June 2009 and upfront HD investment and direct network costs associated with the strong growth in product take-up

Once the HD and direct network investment costs driving product growth have washed through, Sky appears well on track to deliver operating margin growth into the upper twenties for its TV business and into the high single digits for its telecoms business; which we expect to experience little direct material impact in the next five years from the implementation of the Ofcom wholesale must-offer remedy

Implementation of Ofcom’s wholesale must-offer (WMO) remedy for Sky Sports 1 and 2 is to proceed while the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) hears Sky’s appeal, but subject to conditions which include restricting it to three parties: Virgin Media, BT and Top-Up TV

The settlement marks an important concession by Sky on the principle of enforced wholesale, and seems implicitly to reduce the WMO issue to one of price

DTT viewers should now be able to access live Premier League and other premium sports action on Sky Sports 1 and 2 from the start of the 2010/11 football season; but the ability of BT and Top-Up TV to capitalise depends on several factors, among them the possibility of Sky launching Picnic should it satisfy Ofcom’s limited preconditions for that service

VMed’s Q1 results were again strong, with price increases and opex reduction continuing as the main drivers, underpinned by strengthening volume growth

The company’s recently completed debt refinancing gives management much greater flexibility in deciding how much to reinvest in growing the business

The outlook continues to look very encouraging, with the April price increases, further cost reduction, modest turnarounds at Mobile and Business and improved wholesale terms for Sky content still to come

After falling 16% across 2008 and 2009, UK TV NAR (net advertising revenue) looks like it will grow 10% year on year in 2010, amidst continued lack of visibility over the UK’s post election economic outlook

Ofcom’s consultation on the rules governing advertising proposes to scrap the withholding of advertising rule that applies to commercial analogue PSB channels, along with the conditional selling rule that applies to all broadcasters – neither action will have any short term material effect

Ahead of Ofcom is the different airtime quota and distribution rules that apply to commercial analogue PSB over other channels. Equalisation will favour the commercial PSB groups, but views diverge on where to equalise, up or down