| Casting an objective eye on the television industry |
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ITV Results ITV is once again the darling child of the markets, as the companies ability to ride the advertsing merry go round sees it post an improved set of results for the year ended 31st December 2010. Total external revenues were up 10% to £2,064m (2009: £1,879m), with EBITA before exceptional items doubling to £408m (2009: £202m).
Adjusted earnings per share increased to 6.4p (2009: 1.8p) whilst net debt fell to £188m (2009: £612m). At ITV Studios, which are now under the control of ex-C4 man Kevin Lygo profits declined to £81m (2009: £91m), with internal revenues flat at £261m (2009: £262m) - emphasising the need for people within the company who actually know about production. ITV1 share of viewing was down by 4% across 2010, while its digital channels increased their SOV by 11%. Overall, ITV Family SOV was down by 1%. itv.com unique users rose to 10.2m (2009: 8.7m) while revenues increased to £28m (2009: £24m). The company made the usual noises about how a new team would improve its online performance and said that it plans to invest a further £25m into its online segment; "Online revenues, excluding Friends Reunited, increased in 2010 by 17% to £28 million. While this is a good performance it is off a very low base and Online continues to be subscale compared to our Broadcasting business. Operationally Online has made progress with unique users averaging 10.2 million per month in 2010, up 17% year-on-year, and more valuable long form viewing making up an increasing proportion of it. Video views totalled 234 million which was up 9% year-on-year. Long form video views were up 79% year-on-year to 129 million, now making up 55% of the total video views on itv.com. However, itv.com is still not currently fit-for-purpose with a poor navigation and content experience. At the end of 2010 Robin Pembrooke joined ITV as Managing Director of Online and On Demand, and with his senior team now in place, work has started on improving the site. The Online vision for 2011 has been agreed, as has the necessary investment required."
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BSkyB The British culture secretary Jeremy Hunt caused severe consternation amongst the liberal elite when he approved News Corporation's contproposal to take full control of the subscription television giant BSkyB. Hunt said that the deal was contingent on BSkyB fulfilling a number of undertakings including Sky jettisoning its 24-hour news channel Sky News. The undertakings will now be subject to a fifteen-day consultation period, after which Hunt's "intention to accept" will represent an official green light. Hunt attempted to stress his objectivity through repeatedly stating that he had consulted with both the media regulator Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading. A Guardian editorial of March 4 commented; "So Rupert Murdoch got what he wanted. If there is a less surprising sentence in the English language it would be good to know of it. As a result of Jeremy Hunt's announcement yesterday the American media tycoon is virtually certain to end up owning a monster British media company spanning broadcasting, newspapers and film and sports rights – together with the distribution channels through which the content is piped. His television company – double the size of the BBC – will be free to exploit numerous synergies with his newspapers, which are easily the most dominant in the market. If the government doesn't understand why this makes a great many people nervous it is either being disingenuous or dishonest." It is decisions such as this, soaked in Tory dogmatism, that will ensure that when the coalition government does fall apart, the Tory Party wil be condemned to the political wilderness for the next fifty years.
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| News/Extras |
Those that doubted Blinkx have been left with egg on their faces. The video aggregation website which some believed would run out of cash has seen its shares rise by almost 300% in the last year, as the company finally turned a profit. For the six months ended 30 Spetember 2010 the company said that revenue had more than doubled to $27.4m from $13.1m in H1 FY10. Gross profit was up 109% to $17.7m from H1 FY10, with a gross margin of 65%, uunchanged from H1 FY10. An operating profit of $2.0m, compared with an operating loss of $7.4m for H1 FY10, whilst profit before tax of $2.0m, compared with a loss before tax of $7.3m for H1 FY10. The company said that $2.3m cash generated during the period had resulted in a healthy closing balance of $16.9m. At the viewer level, Blinkx said that video streams in the US had grown by 107% from September 2009 to September 2010, with average daily Search run rate during the period of 31.6 million searches per day, compared with 13.1 million per day in H1 FY10. Average deal size for video advertising bookings increased by 40% from the H2 FY10. Blinkx orchestrated a $31m placing of new shares in October 2010 to provide additional funding to support its growth strategy. It is only a matter of time before the company is taken over, with the doubters now having to pay a significantly higher price than thay ewould have had to twelve months ago.