Vodafone and Three may launch a television service after their merger, which is due to complete in the first half of the year. It follows regulatory approval for their £15 billion merger that will create the largest mobile operator in the United Kingdom, with 27 million customers, reducing the number of network operators from four to three.

The plans are reported by The Telegraph, although little detail is provided, with Vodafone saying it is too early to comment on the plans for the company post-merger.

Vodafone claims to service over 21 million television customers across platforms in Europe, although it has so far abstained from launching a traditional television service in the ultracompetitive home market of the United Kingdom.

A Vodafone television service was in development in the United Kingdom around ten years ago but it was shelved before launch in 2017. It went on to develop a common platform across a number of other European territories based on systems from Kaltura.

In 2023, Vodafone offered a Broadband Xtra bundle including an Apple TV 4K box and a 24-month Apple TV+ subscription for its home broadband customers.

Following the launch of a service in Portugal, Vodafone offers a Vodafone TV PLAY box in Ireland with its fibre broadband service. This provides programming from Sky with NOW Sports and Entertainment Membership included. In addition, it offers access to streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, RTÉ Player, Virgin Media Player and TG4 Player.

Vodafone does not have its own fixed broadband infrastructure in the United Kingdom but it resells wholesale services from Openreach and CityFibre.

The merger of Vodafone and Three was approved by the Competition and Markets Authority in December 2024. The companies have committed to invest £11 billion in 5G networks. The merger is expected to complete in the first half of 2025. Vodafone will own 51% of the combined business and three years after completion has the option to acquire the rest from CK Hutchison, which owns Three.

www.vodafone.com

20 years since the first video was uploaded to YouTube, the business is now estimated to be worth about half a trillion dollars. In 2024 it had estimated revenues of $54 billion. YouTube TV is also the largest online multichannel television provider in the United States and could become the leading aggregator of online video services.

The first video was uploaded to YouTube on 23 April 2005. “Me at the zoo” is 19-second video featuring Jawed Karim, one of the three co-founders of YouTube, which was original conceived as an online dating site, with the slogan “Tune In, Hook Up”.

In the video, Jawed simply says: “Alright, so here we are in front of the, uh, elephants, and the cool thing about these guys is that, is that they have really, really, really long, um, trunks, and that’s, that’s cool. And that’s pretty much all there is to say.”

The video has been viewed 354 million times in its 20 years on YouTube. It has 17 million likes and has attracted over 10 million comments.

YouTube accounted for 11.6% of time spent watching television in the United States in February, up from 7.9% in two years. That put it ahead of Disney in terms of share of total viewing.

YouTube generated global advertising revenue of $36.15 billion in 2024. It had annual subscription revenue of over $15 billion from YouTube TV, YouTube Premium, and YouTube Music Premium.

If YouTube were a standalone business, it would be worth between $475 billion and $550 billion, or about 30% of Alphabet’s current valuation, based on a multiple of revenues, according to MoffettNathanson analysts.

“YouTube has substantial runway for further growth — not just in monetization but also in expanding into new business segments, such as becoming the premier streaming aggregator,” the analysts wrote in a research note. “If executed effectively, this could further widen the gap between YouTube and the other media players.”

Although YouTube may be best known as a free online video site, YouTube TV is the largest online multichannel television service provider in the United States with more than 8 million subscribers.

As subscriber numbers for traditional television platforms in the United States continue to collapse, the analyst firm expects YouTube TV to emerge as the industry leader, at least online. It suggests that YouTube has the potential to become the central aggregator for professional video.

www.youtube.com

A share of revenues from subscription fees to online video services should be paid into a fund to support British television production. That is one of the key recommendations of a report from the cross-party Culture, Media and Sport committee to the government. It also calls on the government to require the licensing of creative works in all cases where they are used to train artificial intelligence models.

The report calls for enhanced tax incentives for high-end television production and for online subscription services, such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV+, and Disney+, which benefit from the creativity of British producers, to commit to pay 5% of their UK subscriber revenue into a cultural fund to help finance drama with a specific interest to British audiences.

In high-end television production, the report says, the balance between inward investment and domestic production is at a tipping point. “It is time for streamers to put their money where their mouth is. They laud the UK’s mixed production ecology, with public service broadcasters and independent producers at its heart, but their business practices are putting that at risk. They need to step up their support for the making of culturally British content, and not just reap the cultural and training benefits it provides. Ultimately, they should then benefit from a healthier supply of PSB-made shows that they can license for their platforms.”

The report recommends that all subscription video-on-demand platforms that operate in the United Kingdom play a 5% levy on their UK subscriber revenue into a cultural fund administered by the British Film Institute to support domestic production of high-end television. It says the industry should fund this on a voluntary basis. However, it says if this does not happen within 12 months the government should introduce a statutory levy.

Dame Caroline Dinenage MP, Chair of the CMS Committee, said: “Big box-office blockbusters made in Britain have showcased the UK’s world-class film and high-end television industry like never before. But the boom in inward investment of recent years now risks crowding out our many talented independent British producers. While streamers like Netflix and Amazon have proved a valuable addition for the industry and economy, unless the Government urgently intervenes to rebalance the playing field, for every Adolescence adding to the national conversation, there will be countless distinctly British stories that never make it to our screens.

Adolescence, shot in Wakefield and Sheffield in the North of England, was commissioned by Netflix and became one of its most popular ever series, and was the most viewed television programme across the United Kingdom in the week it was released. For many, it looked like the sort of drama that one might have expected from the BBC.

Peter Kosminsky, who has directed series like Wolf Hall shown on the BBC, recently said the industry was in crisis and that public service broadcasters including the BBC and ITV could no longer afford to make high-end British drama. “I hugely welcome the fact that the CMS select committee has endorsed the call for a 5% levy on streamers’ revenue to support public service broadcasting high-end television. This is a brave thing to do in the current political climate and absolutely the right solution. However, I do think it is important to stipulate that the fund created by this levy should only be available to productions which are either commissioned or co-commissioned by a public service broadcaster. As far as I can see, this isn’t made clear in the report and it is an essential aspect of the 5% levy solution to the problems our industry faces.”

On artificial intelligence, the report says that “Getting the balance between AI development and copyright wrong will undermine the growth of our film and HETV sectors, and wider creative industries. Proceeding with an ‘opt-out’ regime stands to damage the UK’s reputation among inward investors for our previously gold-standard copyright and IP framework.” It says the government should abandon its preference for a data mining exception for AI training with rights reservation model, and instead require AI developers to license any copyrighted works before using them to train their AI models.

British film and high-end television, the House of Commons committee report with recommendations to government, is available from the Parliament web site.

committees.parliament.uk