BotW: Half awake in Boomtown; Labor's TV betting mess
BotW: Half awake in Boomtown; Labor's TV betting mess
Welcome to Best of the Week, written on a drizzly Saturday morning in Tasmania
Today: Regional rumblings; and why the TV networks need to be saved from themselves.
Happy National Non Profit Day. Welcome to my world.
If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to an Unmade membership, this is the perfect time. Your membership includes:
Member-only pricing for our HumAIn and REmade (October 1) conferences;
A complimentary invitation to Unmade’s Compass event (November);
Member-only content and our paywalled archives;
Your own copy of Media Unmade.
Beyond the sandstone blackout curtain
Early on Wednesday, I woke suddenly, to a new experience. I was in the darkness of a hotel room, in a comfortable bed. But, still more than half asleep, I had no idea where I was.
As a points addict, on my Sydney trips I stay at whichever of three Accor hotels is affordable at the time. It wasn’t one of those familiar rooms. Was I still in Auckland? No, I remembered sitting in the tiny Qantas lounge to fly home from NZ a few days earlier. Hobart? Again, nope, I remembered driving home from that one a few days before.
Still not properly awake, lying in the darkness, I couldn’t recall any detail of the previous day’s journey. Even turning the light on gave no immediate clue, although it was a nicer room than I’d usually spring for.
This disorientation was a fascinating, new, experience. Like a character in a crappy TV show relying on exposition through dialogue, I heard myself say, in an amused voice: “Where the fuck am I?”
It took a press of the button next to the bed to open the blinds (bizarrely, I could remember exactly where the button was) to reveal a pre-dawn cityscape. It all came back. I was in Sydney for a Boomtown event.
Boomtown hosted a breakfast in Barangaroo for marketers and media agencies. Yes, I did travel to Sydney from Launceston to hear about how Boomtown life is better.
Demographer Bernard Salt made the argument that regional consumers are growing faster than their city counterparts (more on that when I interview him for the podcast in the coming days).
The welcome came from Boomtown chair Brian Gallagher, former chief sales officer at Southern Cross Austereo.
Eleven years ago, a survey by outdoor company Adshel revealed that twice as many agency staff had eaten at North Bondi Italian than had ever visited Parramatta. Gallagher said the same was true in 2019 when Boomtown launched: “A senior media buyer told me that most of her team had never found their way west of ‘the sandstone curtain’.”
However, Gallagher’s main point wasn’t that of metro versus regional, but of local media versus the platforms. Ad fraud, “variation” (a kind word) in the quality of audience targeting, and rapidly rising advertiser costs thanks to “monopolisation”.
“I don’t think the promise of targeting and transparency in advertising has been delivered… while the rapid shift to bottom-of-funnel tactics seems to have taken the shine off brand discipline. Brand values have fallen as a result of the pursuit of short term sales outcomes.”
All of Gallagher’s points could have been made about media in the capital cities too. The argument is one worth prosecuting more fiercely by the locally-based media companies, rather than medium by medium, but speaking with one voice .
Meanwhile, regional media has emerged as the key to the seemingly never ending attempt by ARN Media to get its hands on rival Southern Cross Austereo.
The Australian Financial Review revealed this week that Australian Community Media proprietor Antony Catalano held talks on Monday with ARN about a joint bid for SCA.
Australian media can be a little claustrophobic at times. At the Boomtown breakfast, ACM’s MD Tony Kendall and Southern Cross Austereo CEO John Kelly were both put on the same table (as was I), but not next to each other. Kendall was among the first to slip away at the end of formalities
With ARN Media, owner of the Kiis and Pure Gold networks, due to release its half year update this coming Thursday, the market is waiting to see if it’s accompanied by a renewed bid for SCA. I expect they will try again.
ARN’s first proposal ten months ago was alongside Anchorage Capital Partners. But that collapsed in May when Anchorage got cold feet about the declining ad market.
Then a second attempt by ARN to go it alone was quickly knocked back.
Catalano, and business partner Alex Waislitz have since emerged as potential kingmakers.
They previously put forward their own proposal to merge some of ACM’s key regional news mastheads and agricultural titles into SCA. Although that was knocked back too, they have now amassed a 15% stake in SCA - enough to potentially block anyone else’s deal.
The main outcomes ARN Media is looking for are to take SCA’s five metro capital Triple M network, and to also expand its Kiis FM network to five cities. It also wants to end up as the owner of a single audio streaming platform. Catalano and Waislitz could deliver all of that.
A potential deal would see ACM take on the leftover radio and TV licences except for those where ownership would break the media plurality rules about the minimum number of voices in a market.
Thursday will be an interesting day.
Labor will do the TV industry a favour if it bans gambling ads
Last month, Crikey’s proprietor Eric Beecher published his book The Men Who Killed The News, in which he argued that media moguls have too much hidden power.
This month, leaks from government briefings given privately to media companies and betting company lobbyists revealed that the TV industry is on the verge of persuading Labor not to ban betting ads after all.
Today, a piece across the Nine newspapers reports: “Alliance for Gambling Reform’s Tim Costello and others pushing for a ban met with Rowland’s staff on Friday after Labor finally allowed a briefing for those who refused to sign gag orders. Costello said the meeting was a ‘farce’ and it was obvious corporate interests had advantages not given to groups who opposed gambling ads.”
Labor has got itself into a political pickle just months before an election. Does it make a law change for which there appears to be widespread public support? Or does it back the TV networks who will influence that election in their news coverage?
I wonder whether Monday night’s Four Corners episode added a tiny data point. Any Labor backbencher who tuned in early for Bill Shorten’s appearance on Q&A and happened to watch the program about Seven’s awful newsroom culture would have asked themself some version of: “Why should we help these bozos?”
Shorten’s contention on Q&A: “We’ve got ourselves in this wicked situation where now some of the free to air media need gambling ad revenue at any time in order just to stay afloat,” was bad politics.
And in the long term, it’s also bad economics.
In the coming months, the next NRL deal will be negotiated.
Like gamblers, the TV networks can’t help but overstretch themselves when it comes to sports rights. They tell themselves that this time it will be different, and they’ll come out ahead. Then they end up chasing their losses.
When Nine, Foxtel and the rest decide how much they can afford to bid on rights, they do so based on how much advertising revenue they can bring in if everything goes perfectly.
This is where Labor can help them. If the TV networks anticipate no gambling revenue in the mix, they will all have to bid less. Sports rights inflation - one of the major factors in the trouble that Seven West Media is in - might finally calm down.
The TV networks are the market when it comes to sports rights, but they’ve been incapable of working in their own best interests, bidding each other up beyond what is affordable.
In the same way, they were incapable of acting in their own self interests when the public was turning against the tidal wave of betting ads. It could have been handled via self regulation. They need help.
The best gift Labor can give the TV industry in the long term is to be the adult in the room, and ban the ads.
Unmade Index takes gains into third day
The Unmade Index crept upwards for a third day in a row after an improvement in Nine’s valuation lifted the market despite most other stocks going in the other direction. The index landed on 481 points, up by 0.65%.
Nine rose by 3.3%, despite its majority owned real estate platform Domain dropping by 2.6%. Yesterday morning Domain unveiled a solid set of end of financial year numbers, albeit not quite as good as the market had anticipated.
COTW: Bad guy
In each edition of BotW, our friends at Little Black Book Online highlight their Campaign of the Week
LBB’s APAC reporter Casey Martin writes:
CHEP has played on the type of car chase scene seen in all action movies, and turned it into a display of the efficiency of the Mobil fuel range sold at 7-Eleven forecourts.
The spot features a hero stuck on the car hood for so long that he can’t remember why he’s there.
Comedy is often hard to pull off; CHEP has done so with charm and simplicity.
In case you missed it:
On Monday we marked the return to print of Cosmopolitan Australia and discussed a week where Nine was the centre of intrigue:
On Tuesday, in members-only content, we shared a brand new theory (remember where you read it first): that Nine could sell Domain to fund a purchase of Foxtel:
On Wednesday we examined the annual TV revenue numbers and discovered an industry in marginally. better shape than many thought:
On Thursday we dug into Seven West Media’s annual results and discovered a company whose commercial dive may be flattening out:
On Friday we interviewed Foxtel’s Julian Ogrin after the company revealed strong streaming numbers, and its owner News Corp put it up for sale:
Disclosure (in case you didn’t work it out): My Sydney travel and accommodation was covered by Boomtown.
Time to leave you to your Saturday.
Abe Udy and I will be back with Best of the Week on Monday.
If you’re looking for some weekend admin, don’t forget that the earlybird discount for our retail media conference REmade expires in three days’ time. Grab your ticket today.
And you only have until Friday to enter the REmade Retail Media Awards before the late fee kicks in.
Have a great weekend.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media
Very interesting Tim. I'll start with saying that living in the Southern Highlands is great (apart from what bushfires can do). And I'll take the leap that probably feel the same being in Tassie.
When I was reading, one of the paragraphs said "...while the rapid shift to bottom-of-funnel tactics seems to have taken the shine off brand discipline."
Spot on. Logical thinking is that while the bottom-of-the-funnel may be an expenditure saving, but by definition there will be less consumers to contacted. A "spend less and earn more" seems a tad screw-ball. I wonder how many marketers are focused on brand growth but are/have to succumb to the bean-counters.
Cheers.
JG.