Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Changes at Philips, BT and ITV and not # 46 Essex

There are some interesting changes in some of the long established traditional media companies and telcos as 2013 gathers pace.


Audio tape innovator
1) Philips selling more of its consumer media business - Philips who were for many years a producer of broadcast equipment, trailblazers of the audio and video cassette 'solutions' .

BT challenged
2) BT share price put on 'hold' BT share price has risen steadily of late but there are concerns about the costs around the infrastructure rebuild and the challenges for further staff reductions. BT is investing in the media side of the customer proposition. When I worked at BT in the late 90's to mid 05 I had seen BT Media miss the chance of purchasing the BBC technical division when the BBC outsourced this  (in hindsight I think BT probably had a good escape).
My feeling is now that BT needs a partner to provide expertise and scale, I don't know if ITV and BT could work together on this and offer some competition to BSkyB?

ITV studios needs a refresh?
3) On this subject I see that 'ITV buys the lease on London Studios' this means that the attractive piece of land by Festival hall where LWT set up shop in the late 60's  is now under the ITV control rather than their landlords - I don't know if this means that a rather old building will be replaced or refurbished?

Big Idea 46 is ethics...

but it's such a big one that it'll take some thought in the meantime have a look at the great TV show about Essex that Mr Meades did.