Final bids are expected for Warner Bros Discovery before it enters a period of exclusive negotiations with a prospective purchaser. Paramount Skydance, Comcast, and Netflix submitted initial bids and WBD is expecting best and final offers.
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The BBC iPlayer catalogue is approaching the number of hours of programming available on Netflix, although both offer less than Amazon Prime Video. They are all well ahead of other players in the United Kingdom. In its annual report on the BBC, the regulator outlines the challenges facing the corporation and the requirement for a regulatory regime to support its public purposes.
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The Macquarie investment fund has agreed the sale of its 26.5% stake in media services and transmission infrastructure provider Arqiva to an undisclosed buyer for just £16.5 million, implying a valuation of the company at £62 million. It represents a collapse in the value of the infrastructure assets over the price originally paid for them. The ultimate value of Arqiva is highly dependent on decisions about the future of digital terrestrial television transmission in the United Kingdom.
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Netgem TV has launched a palm-sized ‘puck’ device it calls PLEIO that is compatible with Freely, the television platform provided by everyone TV in the United Kingdom. It comes with a remote control and gamepad and costs £99 with a three-month free subscription to games and additional channels, which is an optional £9.99 a month after that, although it may also be bundled by internet service providers.
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The BBC risks compliant television licence fee payers questioning the fairness of the system if collection and enforcement is not modernised. The Public Accounts Committee, which examines the value for money of government projects, warns that while the BBC is a trusted institution, its relevance across the United Kingdom is under pressure. It suggests that the increasing number of homes not paying for a television licence represented a potential loss of £1.1 billion in revenue over the last year.
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Broadcast channels continued to gain viewing in the United States in October, but so did online services. NFL viewing drove a rise in both as viewing increased seasonally. Online video services accounted for 45.7% of all television viewing, led by YouTube with 12.9%.
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