The bounce back in H1 2010 advertising revenues (18% up over H1 2009), combined with extra cost savings, turned last year’s £72 million loss into this year’s £71 million profit; but could not disguise the need for transformation of a business overly dependent on an advertising model in long-term structural decline

The management’s five year goal of reducing the advertising revenue share (now 74%) to 50% echoes previous targets and the ability of the new team to deliver the goal will depend first and foremost on a revitalised ITV content production business

The agreement with Sky to launch HD versions of ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 to Sky+ HD subscribers marks ITV’s first return to pay-TV since the collapse of the ITV Digital venture in 2002. This should not be seen as an about turn in ITV’s commitment to free-to-air broadcasting, but rather as a one off win-win opportunity for ITV and Sky

Strong FY 2010 adjusted revenue growth of 11% was powered by a 15% rise in subscription revenues, reflecting a mixture of solid subscriber growth in spite of the recession and burgeoning multi-product sales, with HD subscriptions registering a net increase of 1.63 million to end the year at 2.94 million and the telecoms sector breaking into operating profit in Q4

Firm cost control and streamlining of manufacturing and subscriber management expenses now make Sky’s 25% TV operating margin target look very achievable, but also leave it room to increase spend on programming substantially within the guidance limits of pegging increases to the rate of revenue growth

Overshadowing the results is News Corp’s proposal to purchase the 60.9% of BSkyB shares that it does not already own, subject to regulatory review. Assuming it goes ahead, News Corp will have a larger market share in the UK across media (TV, newspapers and books) than any other company in a major market

Virgin Media’s Q2 results showed real strength in the top line, with continuing growth in cable revenue due to increases in both price and volume compounded by long-awaited growth in revenue from mobile and B2B, although overall performance was compromised to an extent by higher costs

The sale of VMtv to Sky cements a de facto pay TV duopoly by clarifying the distinctive wholesale and retail roles of the two leading players, against which others will find it hard to compete

The outlook continues to look encouraging despite the economic environment and this is reflected in management’s plan to return £700 million of capital, a historic milestone in the history of UK cable

The transaction size means that the OFT was obliged to examine BSkyB’s purchase of the VMtv channels. The transaction will probably be approved because of the small impact on Sky’s share of NAR (Net Advertising Revenue), which will rise from around 14% to 16%

The more pressing competition concern, which has attracted little attention, is Sky’s growing market power in the determination of carriage fee payments. Nevertheless the lack of companies actively prepared to complain to the OFT probably means that the transaction will go through without a murmur

Separately, the likely purchase of Five by Richard Desmond raises regulatory issues to do with the possible reduction of media ‘plurality’. The Sky/VMtv transaction and Channel 4’s taking over UKTV advertising sales also places Five Sales in a significantly weaker position, but any attempts to join with one of the big three sales groups (ITV, Channel 4 or Sky) may well be rejected by the competition regulators

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

Total TV advertising expenditure is expected to fall between 4% and 7% in 2006. ITV1 will suffer most, with a projected fall in NAR of around 13-14%, but the rest of the TV industry is also starting to feel the pain