The growth of digital TV has been impressive, from a standing start at the end of 1998 to 5.5m Sky Digital subscribers and 1.1m ITV Digital subscribers by June this year. Sky has pulled ahead of its Granada/Carlton owned rival, but progress for both has been steady. Jupiter MMXI recently predicted that over 50% of… Continue reading Insight Analysis: Our Digital Future

UK public relations and advertising company, Chime Communications, this morning said that it is positive about its future, despite seeing no improvement in market conditions before 2002. Chairman Lord Bell said that Chime’s interim financial results ‘show the group’s strength and are extremely satisfactory’, coming in a period when the market ‘continues to be very… Continue reading Chime Communications Offers Positive Outlook Despite Market Uncertainty

After four days of freefall and volatility the stock market rallied this morning as the bargain hunters moved in. Yesterday the FTSE dropped to its lowest level for four years as Europe’s stock markets followed declines in the Asian markets. There were fears of a global crash as the French and German markets also reached… Continue reading Economy Rallies Following Worldwide Slump

Profits at SMG have been heavily impacted by the slowdown in the advertising market and an increase in the group’s ITV licence fees, the interim results released this morning have shown. Pre-tax profit was down by 33.7% to £19.9 million for the six months to 30 June, whilst operating profit fell by 12% £32 million.… Continue reading SMG Profits Stung By Ad Slowdown

US online adspend fell by 10% year on year in the first half of 2001, according to figures released today by CMRi, the internet division of advertising and marketing communications group, CMR. CMRi estimates that US internet adspend for H1 2001 totalled $1.5 billion. Yahoo continued to drive overall website revenues with a total of… Continue reading Internet Hit By Ad Downturn As Spend Drops 10% In First Half

BSkyB is in discussions with Channel 5 that may lead to the satellite group taking a stake in the terrestrial station, the Sunday Business reported yesterday without naming its sources. C5 is owned 65% by pan-European broadcaster RTL and 35% by United Business Media (UBM). However, UBM has recently disposed of the rest of its… Continue reading BSkyB Interested In C5 Stake According To Reports

The well-documented fall-out in the internet market has reached Chrysalis as the company today announced that it will be ending all new media investments bar its sports network Rivals.net. The write down to Chrysalis’ accounts for the year will total £9.6 million and this does not include trading losses incurred by the New Media division… Continue reading New Media Write-Offs Cost Chrysalis

The French Government may relax its regulations on television advertising, possibly allowing press and retailers to advertise on TV by 2003, according to French press reports and ABN Amro. The broker says that the rationale behind the move would be to increase the attractiveness of the digital terrestrial television (DTT) platform to free to air… Continue reading France May Relax TV Advertising Rules

Chief executive of US media group, Liberty Media, John Malone, has said in an interview with Die Welt that the company will start operating cable television services in Germany in about one year’s time. The announcement follows Liberty Media’s recent acquisition of six cable franchises from Deutsche Telekom for around €5.5 billion. Further investment costs… Continue reading Liberty Media To Launch German Cable TV Services

Market research group Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) has this morning reported a strong set of interim financial results, with organic sales rising by 6.7% and pre-tax profit up by 9.1% to £17.1 million. The company said that the strong figures illustrate the ‘relative resilience’ of the market information industry worldwide, which is growing despite the… Continue reading Taylor Nelson Sees Strong Results, Driven By Core Market Research Business