MEDIA FORUM: Is there any real optimism for recovery in 2003?(Industry Overview)

Time to ask the tea leaves what 2003 will have in store for media Alternatively, Alasdair Reid asks owners and buyers for their predictions.

It's easy to predict what's in store for us all in 2003. There's obviously going to be a war in the Middle East. Unless of course there isn't, Saddam climbs down, and it turns out that the whole thing has been no more than a double dare game of Iraqi chicken. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon could well end up being this year's trendy holiday destination.

And as for the economic outlook, well that's easy too. From a purely UK perspective we're going to continue along the inexorable trajectory of this double D-cupped, enamel bath-shaped recession much beloved by the chief executives of advertising conglomerates and about which so much has been written. And yet, so subtle is this curve that it might actually seem like a gradual yet sustained economic recovery.

Not that we'll feel the benefits. We'll all be suffering the wintry effects of the property market crash that began at the tail end of last year - unless you believe what some lenders are telling us, which is that December was, contrary to popular belief, actually yet another record month.

On the advertising and media industry side, things are equally straightforward.

ITV will consolidate into one company unless the competition authorities block the merger; and the network will be sold by one (or possibly two, possibly one-and-a-half) sales house(s), forcing other broadcasters either to set up rival sales houses or to do nothing at all.

Increased programming spend at the terrestrial networks will lead to a creative renaissance and a ratings recovery which will be tempered only by a dawning realisation that cable and satellite channels are nicking larger numbers of their viewers. Publishers will continue to manage decline, consoled by the fact that paper prices get cheaper by the day. Every other medium will, at some stage in the year, claim that it is the fastest-growing medium in the UK display advertising market.