BotD: Investors give belated thumbs-up to SCA results; the man who still believes in TV; the prosaic truth about a betting ad ban
Welcome to Best of the Day at the end of a Friday where everybody was talking about television. Today, Australian Digital Holdings explain why they’re buying into free to air TV just as everyone else is getting out; Foxtel’s boss Patrick Delany picks up the phone from Vegas to talk media law; and Antoinette Lattouf’s court battle with the ABC wraps up.
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Delayed gratification for Southern Cross Austereo on the Unmade Index
After barely reacting to yesterday’s solid update, ASX investors decided to reward Southern Cross Austereo after all, with the share price jumping by 8.5% today. SCA is now trading at its highest point since last June.
It was also a good day for radio minnow Sports Entertainment Group. The owner of SEN Radio improved by 15.8%
At the top end of town, Nine retreated, losing 3%. Ooh Media also went backwards, losing 4.8%.
The Unmade Index closed on 560.2 points, down by 1.67% for the day.
The day in question:
TV’s not dead, says TV guy
Australia’s newest TV player broke cover, with Jason Morrison taking the role of director of television for Australian Digital Holdings. Yesterday Southern Cross Austereo said it had agreed to sell its regional TV licenses for Tasmania, Spencer Gulf, Broken Hill, Mt Isa, Darwin and chunks of central Australia for a headline price of $6.4m. Morrison told Mumbrella: “You spend any time in these areas, you look around, everyone watches free-to-air. As much as everyone wants to write off television and say it’s finished the truth is, it’s not.”
TV networks would adjust to loss of betting ads, admits Delany
Patrick Delany, CEO of Foxtel Group, became the first TV executive to admit that it won’t be the end of the world if sporting ads are banned or restricted. Conceding - for the first time from a television boss - that any such move would drive down the cost of future rights deals, Delany said he would also push sporting codes to renegotiate existing deals if it happened. “Over time, the market will adapt,” he told Mumbrella.
ACCC stays out of the way of Paramount
Much like the time small Irish newspaper the The Skibbereen Eagle warned the Emperor of Russia that it would be watching him, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has volunteered that it has no problem with global studio giant Skydance taking over Paramount Global. Capital Brief revealed that the ACCC gave the blockbuster US deal its blessing back in December but nobody noticed.
Paramount also said in a US legal filing this week that it had cut the valuation of its Network Ten TV licences down to just $20.7m.
Adland loses touch
The marketing world has lost one of the things that made it special, strategist Nick Kavanagh argued today. In a guest post for Mumbrella he warned:
“My suspicion is that it’s relatively common for a campaign to go to market with the agencies responsible never being in the same room. Many may never have even met one another; the media agency simply handed assets without truly understanding the idea that drove the execution. The creative team deprived of the additional stimulus of working with connections people to maximise an idea’s potential. It’s enough to just get the stuff out there to as many people as possible, rather than seeing medium and message as partners that ebb and flow symbiotically through their respective developments. “
Antoinette Lattouf judge puts on his thinking wig
Antoinette Lattouf’s court case against the ABC finally wrapped up this afternoon. Justice Darryl Rangiah will spend the next few weeks deciding whether she was illegally dismissed from her five day fill-in on ABC Sydney. He’ll also be contemplating contradictory evidence from former chair Ita Buttrose and outgoing managing director David Anderson.
Time to leave you to your Friday night.
If you’re on eastern time and near your radio, hopefully you’ll catch me over at ABC Radio National in about 20 minutes from now. Please join Daany Saeed and me for MediaLand, at 5.30pm tonight, or catch us in the usual podcast places, whenever you have a 28-and-a-half minute audio hole in your life.
There’s lots in tonight’s episode: Progamming guru Craig Bruce will join us to talk about the Marty Sheargold saga; we’ll look at the place of dirt units in politics; we ask why Jeff Bezos is tightening his hold on the Washington Post’s editorial policy; and we examine former ABC chair Ita Buttrose’s extraordinary attack on managing director David Anderson.
And I’ll be back in your inbox tomorrow morning with Best of the Week.
Have a great night.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella
tim@unmade.media
