Our current forecast of UK advertising revenues in 2009 is a decline of 12.2% across all the display media, led by a steep fall of 19% in newspapers, a result of the double whammy of the migration of classified advertising to the internet and the economic crisis

Visibility is poor for TV advertising spend beyond January and February, which we expect to be down 10-15%. Although the influence of the internet on TV has been less severe than on the press, our initial forecast for the full year is of a 10% decline, due to the recession and deflationary pressures

We expect internet advertising to continue growing through the recession, but at vastly lower levels – we project only 2.1% growth in 2009, a sharp deceleration from 20% in 2008, and growth will be driven entirely by search, as both online classified and display spend are falling as advertisers in key categories cut back

Ending a simmering commercial dispute, Vivendi’s Canal+ has agreed to distribute its packages to France Télécom’s Orange TV satellite customers, allowing Orange to relaunch its DTH platform (targeting 4 million customers off the DSL TV footprint) after its dismal ‘do-it-alone’ first six months

Canal+ recruitments will benefit from the resumption of active marketing for its packages over Orange TV platforms, after a poor year for subscriber growth

Canal+ catch-up TV will now be available to all Orange Canal+ DSL TV subscribers, as it is to those on Free, where it is very popular, plus Orange satellite subscribers, thus giving Orange back the leadership position on IPTV in France

ITV has agreed to provide 7 day catch-up and archive content to Virgin Media’s TV customers. By closing the last major gap in its VOD offering, Virgin Media can better exploit VOD as a differentiator with Sky, thereby assisting customer retention

ITV also stands to gain from the circa £5-10 million per annum that it could receive for distribution of its catch-up content and the addition of 500 hours of top archive content to TV Choice, Virgin Media’s subscription VOD service. There appears no corresponding downside risk to ITV advertising revenues

The announcement highlights the future role of Kangaroo, the proposed BBC/ITV/Channel 4 joint venture, in supplying archive material to complete Virgin Media’s VOD line up, and the remedies the Competition Commission is considering to protect wholesale VOD customers

Kangaroo, the BBC/ITV/Channel 4 VOD project, looks unlikely to see the light of day any time soon, based on the Competition Commission’s (CC) provisional findings announced on 3rd December

The consultation period for the second phase of Ofcom’s Second Public Service Broadcasting Review closes on 4th December 2008. The central issue before Ofcom is that the current PSB model is broken, lacking the flexibility to “adapt to audiences’ evolving needs”. The primary concern lies with the commercial sector, which is under increasing strain to deliver its PSB commitments due to structural changes in the television medium that have been compounded by the present economic crisis. This presentation sets out our views about the role of structural changes in restraining TV net advertising revenues (NAR) growth in recent years along with our latest TV forecasts to 2013. Whilst some of the current downward pressures on TV NAR may be expected to ease, a new structural change that threatens the commercial PSB sector is the growing chasm between BBC investment in its PSB services and the advertising revenues of ITV, Channel 4 and Five

The enclosed presentation updates our latest UK TV and display media advertising figures to reflect the dramatic downgrading of the state of the UK economy in recent weeks and days, ending talk of a shallow and short recession. Our central case assumption is of a 2% real GDP decline in 2009, led by a consumption decline of 3%, but we recognise that the UK economy has entered a long and uncertain period of adjustment, with few historical parallels, which will require constant updating of our forecasts as it evolves. On our central case, total UK advertising will be down almost 5% in 2008 to £16.8 billion, with a further decline of 12% in 2009. The declines for display advertising are sharper, and will accelerate the structural changes taking place in the UK media landscape mainly due to the shift to the internet

This presentation on the French pay-TV market covers the principal recent developments on that market and the positioning of suppliers, including Vivendi's Canal+, France Télécom's Orange, Numericable and alnets Iliad and SFR. French TV homes are rapidly switching over to 'free' multichannel TV services, but the upside for premium subscriptions is modest. To maintain positioning as the dominant premium content provider, Canal+ is both improving the user experience of its core DTH subscribers (e.g. the new Le Cube), and widening its partnerships with network operators to offer on-demand to Canal+ subscribers. Orange is one significant exception, due to the rivalry initiated by the launch of Orange TV pay services in July 2008. This rivalry was a factor in lower subscription levels for Canal+ in Q3 2008, down to 10.41 million, in addition to the ongoing lure of free, plus the economic downturn and credit crunch. The target of 11.5 million subscriptions by 2011 looks out of reach (Orange Threat to Canal+ Targets [2008-24])

This report examines the role of local commercial media in supplying the information needs of the UK’s many communities, in the context of the BBC’s ‘Local Video’ plans to add video to its local online services. Unlike the BBC services, which are publicly funded, regional and local commercial media must cover their costs from revenue earned from circulation and advertising. On top of the structural shift to the internet of media consumption and advertising, their business models are severely stressed by the ongoing recession, which will only widen the gap between the BBC’s revenues and that of commercial media. The BBC Trust’s decision on the local video plans will be a game-changer for local commercial media in the UK

Virgin Media’s Q3 results represent a significant step in the recovery of the business, with ARPU and consumer cable revenue stable for the first time in 18 months. Group OCF growth was hit by one-off opex reductions in the prior quarter but continues to grow on an underlying basis

Another robust set of subscriber KPIs provides little indication of the economic downturn taking its toll, other than a sharp 1.1% jump in churn over the previous quarter, which could reflect other factors. The bigger issue appears to be subscriber spin-down to less expensive packages