ITV claims that it expects net advertising revenue to be up almost 2% in the first quarter this year as opposed to a total TV market decrease of almost 0.7%. This comes in the wake of the fact that ITV posted a 17% drop in earnings in 2007 as a result of digital investment and differences over premium rate phone ins.
Broadcaster ITV and its family of channels have to their credit hit soap Coronation Street and the talent show X Factor. ITV says that they had a net advertising revenue of 1.49 billion pounds last year but are encouraged by the fact that 2007 proved to be the year in which its total viewing has increased year on year the first time since the early 19990s. Its share of commercial TV in 2008 has been steady at 41.5 % so far.
The Underlying Earnings Before Interest, Tax and Amortisation (EBITA) for the year were down to 311 million pounds as compared to 375 million pounds. Analysts expect revenues of 2.09 billion pounds and an EBITA of 306 million pounds. The board of ITV has pegged the final dividend at 1.8 pence a share.
GCap Media has stated that it is considering the offer Global Radio has made in light of their new bid. GCap is Britain’s largest commercial radio group and had received an offer from the privately owned Global Radio. The initial offer made by Global Radio was 202 pence per share and they have recently upped it to 225 per pence. They have also requested GCap to drop their strict March 5th negotiations deadline.
GCap are expected to make an announcement soon about their decision
A wide variety of BBC television programmes are now available for users to download at Apple’s UK iTunes store. As per BBC, this is the first time any UK broadcaster has offered its programmes via iTunes. Every programme will cost £1.89 to users willing to download them. Once users have downloaded the programmes, they can play them on Mac or PC or even on video iPods, iPhones and Apple’s IPTV service.
The director of digital Media at BBC Worldwide, Simon Danker, said that with more and more people watching TV on iPods, this particular move will provide audiences with a huge range of alternatives to see BBC shows. Shows that are obtainable include Spooks, Life on Mars and Robin Hood. Other shows will also be available as soon as they are sown on BBC iPlayer. Recently, the BBC has joined hands with MySpace, YouTube, ITV and Channel 4 for the Kangaroo on-demand service.
The BBC has its own free on-demand service in the name of iPlayer. This allows all viewers to catch up with all the programs that they might have missed in the past week. The initive was extremely popular. Roughly 3.5 million programs downloaded it within the first two weeks of its launch. The programmes will first be available on iPlayer and then on iTunes.
After a decade-long battle to prevent illegal file-sharing, the beleaguered music industry has finally agreed to give fans what they’ve always demanded - an unlimited supply of free legal songs. Illegal music downloads have jumped up over the last few years due to increasing access to CD replication hardware/software and high speed broadband internet.
With CD sales falling and legal downloads yet to bridge the gap, the industry has decided to embrace the file-sharing technology, albeit with reluctance since it almost threatened to strike at its roots. Digital service Qtrax has just announced that it would come up with a catalogue of over 25 million songs to be downloaded to retain, free - without any restriction on the number of tracks.
The service has been endorsed by most leading record companies, including Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI, which have fought file-sharers in the courts to stop piracy. The gamble is that music fans won’t mind some amount of advertising around jukebox of the Qtrax website in lieu of authorised use of almost all songs available. The service will make use of the ‘peer-to-peer’ network that comprises not only hit songs but rarities & live tracks from the world’s popular artists. It is felt that incompatibility with the iPod player won’t put music lovers off, though Qtrax has already mentioned of an ‘iPod solution’ to be made public in April 2008.