Channel 4 has confirmed it will distribute catch-up and archive TV shows via YouTube on a non-exclusive basis starting in November, with the broadcaster responsible for selling advertising around its content

The partnership looks to be a win-win: Channel 4 stands to get a huge lift in its online audience while retaining control over sales, while Google achieves a breakthrough deal with a major broadcaster with the hope of more to come

We expect a rash of similar deals as rights holders, broadcasters and video service providers jostle for position in the nascent internet TV market, but few will benefit from the special synergies offered by Channel 4-YouTube

Recent weeks have seen a marked improvement in the short-term outlook for TV NAR (Net Advertising Revenues), with total decline for 2009 reckoned to be in the order of -12.5% after a fourth quarter in which year-on-year decline is now expected to be in the order of -6%

The economic outlook for 2010 remains very uncertain due to the drastic cuts needed in the government’s spending to bring the deficit under control, which could lead to a double dip recession, and the persistence of downward pressures on airtime costs due to structural changes to the TV medium

We have accordingly revised our central case forecast year on year decline in TV NAR from -8% up to -4% in 2010, but it may not be until the London Olympics year of 2012 that we again witness positive growth

Amazon has announced that it will launch its ‘Kindle’ ebook reader internationally. It will be sold from the US site and shipped internationally for $270, with a free global wireless service for downloading books. This looks like an interim step with full ‘local’ sales in place next year; nonetheless local media (newspapers, magazines and book publishers) are in place.

All of this, however, was caused by regulatory effects, with underlying growth being stable for the first time since March 2008

We expect both underlying and reported growth to recover in the December quarter, and to progressively improve throughout 2010

Recession has hit internet advertising, with spend down 1% YoY in H1 2009, but the collapse in advertising on traditional media helped push online to 23% share, up 4 percentage points versus H1 2008

Based on IABUK/PwC data, we estimate that spending on search rose 2% YoY in H1, whilst display was down 5% and classified fell by 4%, the latter supported by unexpected growth in non-recruitment listings

We have adjusted our forecast for online advertising up slightly to flat for the year, but whilst the internet has now overtaken TV in absolute terms, TV remains very much the king of display

By 29th September, all submissions on the government’s anti-piracy proposals will need to be in to the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), with furious lobbying taking place in the lead up to the tabling of the draft Digital Economy bill in November

Under the proposals, content owners are to identify IP addresses of file-sharers and communicate them to their ISPs, which would be required to write letters to the account holders, and also release this information to content owners in the event of continued file-sharing activity to allow legal proceedings to be initiated

Opportunities for retreat abound, but if the proposals become law (rather than shelved for the next government), the UK’s new online piracy regime will generate economic benefits for the content owners (and the creative industries), which will share costs with the ISPs under the government’s latest proposal

The impending Competition Commission announcement of its provisional decision concerning the Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) remedy is expected to make little change beyond extending CRR to cover variants of ITV1, such as ITV1 +1 and ITV1 HD

Extending CRR to cover ITV1 variants should benefit ITV NAR (Net Advertising Revenue) by improving ITV1’s overall audience share, but does nothing to ease the deflationary pressures now gripping the TV advertising medium, where CRR works hand in hand with the requirement on the commercial PSB channels to sell 100% of their advertising inventories

The current goings on underline the dichotomy between competition and public broadcasting policy objectives

According to recent speculation, Sky stands to benefit materially in the short-term from the replacement of Setanta by ESPN, but could suffer from rights inflation and worse in the longer term should ESPN become really successful

ESPN’s commitment to a pure wholesale channel distribution model across all platforms and lower outlay on rights gives a real chance of building a viable business where Setanta failed

But, profits will take time to build and there is little to suggest that Sky will either materially benefit from having ESPN rather than Setanta as a customer, or that ESPN will emerge as a serious threat to Sky’s own core premium sports business in the next three to four years

Core female readers appear to be leaving the consumer magazine market, or at least not purchasing multiple titles to the degree they have done in the past, raising concerns that the scale of the industry is starting to spiral downwards

Men’s titles continue to fall and titles targeted at young readers are in freefall as these demos drift online for content and social network services, or in some cases adopt more adult titles from a younger age

If circulation decline continues at the 2008/09 rate, the sector risks losing the confidence of the supermarket giants that generate more than 50% of magazine sales, an outcome with unthinkable consequences for many large and medium sized publishers

UK classified advertising, which covers categories such as recruitment, property, used car sales as well as directory services including Yellow Pages, has been hit severely in the recession

Last year, we estimate there was a 10.4% decline to £4.1 billion of total classified expenditure across all media including newspapers, magazines and online

However, trends have since accelerated, and we project total classifieds will generate about £3.2 billion this year, a decline of 27% on 2008

VMed’s Q2 results were again mixed but, on balance, encouraging, with the impact of the May price increases feeding through into revenue growth

Cable volume performance was poor but, with the exception of broadband, no worse than expected, and is not expected to deteriorate further relative to the market

We remain optimistic that management will succeed in combining revenue growth with reductions in operating costs to generate sustained growth in cash flow from autumn 2009