Commercial radio trade association launches new R.A.D.I.O. plan to achieve 20% revenue growth, increased share of listening and migration to digital platforms by 2011

Hostilities between Sky and Virgin have intensified during the course of cable’s re-launch, Sky’s announcement of its pay-DTT plans, and bilateral negotiations over channel carriage fee payments on the satellite and cable platforms

Yell UK is the dominant supplier of Classified Advertising Directory Services (CDAS) in the UK. Its principal competitor is BT but, as a natural monopoly, it is regulated, and has just undergone a sector review lifting the price caps currently in place. What does the future now hold for Yell, and more generally for CDAS, which has been the only growth sector in print classified advertising since 2004?

Strong second quarter subscriber figures, including 432,000 gross additions, the highest in six years, attest to a strong and improving product offer. To reach the core target of 10 million subscribers by 2010 will, however, require poaching many cable customers

Three sources of downside risk for Trader Media include: a sluggish car market impacting on print and online ad volumes; the decline of print ad volumes as a result of the shift to online and resulting compression of Trader’s operating margins; Trader’s powerful competitors in the online ad market, especially eBay

Trader’s valuation could be 10 to 11 times 2006 profit of £120 million, although a minority stake makes it difficult for a private equity investor to get in, slash the expensive print-based cost structure, and get out quickly

iPod volumes hit a record 21.1 million units sold in the key Christmas quarter, but year-over-year quarterly revenue growth declined again to 18% (from 29%) due to lower prices for all iPods and consumers’ drift to low priced flash memory based players (iPod Shuffle). Apple’s push on the iPhone limits the iPod’s future development and hence this segment’s future revenue growth

Trinity Mirror’s decision to sell certain regional newspaper and sports assets is ill-timed in view of the severe declines in newspaper circulation and advertising revenues across the industry, which could make it difficult for Trinity to realise its target price of £600 million

Marks & Spencer’s plan to make itself the world’s most 'sustainable' retailer is an extremely ambitious proposal to make the company carbon neutral, reduce its own landfill waste to zero, and change its supply chain to improve its position as an ethical retailer

BT has gone further than expected in setting a “medium term” goal of 2-3 million customers for BT Vision, remaining vague on when it will be achieved. Giving away the PVR and a cheap self-install option, due later in 2007, are essential to achieve this target

Radio groups implement further cutbacks and increased centralisation to combat shrinking audiences and revenues

In our view, commercial radio requires more than a marketing plan and cost cutbacks – a renaissance of creativity and inward investment are needed for radio to compete more effectively with the increasing diversity of personalised audio content available online

Television advertising revenues fell by nearly 7% and radio advertising by more than 4% in 2006 according to latest market estimates. We expect declines of around 4% for both media in 2007

US digital music sales continue to perform well, despite press reports to the contrary, with the average weekly volume of tracks sold up 75% in 2006, supported by steady sales of iPods