BotW: The content guy's biggest task - turning around the ABC; And what just happened with Nine's sales guy?

Dec 21, 2024

Welcome to Best of the Week, written (and sent a little later than usual) after oversleeping this morning, despite the early daylight of the Summer solstice. I shouldn’t have put that eye mask on without setting the alarm, but boy do I feel refreshed.

Today: How will Hugh Marks do at the ABC, and what just happened at Nine?

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Nine guys

It was a week where media talk was focused on the men of Nine.

Hugh Marks was announced as the next managing director of the ABC. Acting Nine CEO Matt Stanton shaped up to make the big chair permanent, and chief sales officer Michael Stephenson unexpectedly departed.

Hugh knows?

We’ll start with Hugh Marks. When he was announced as the new CEO of Nine back in 2015, most of the advertising market had no idea who he was. By the time he left in 2020, everybody knew his name.

As James Madden observed in The Australian on Monday: “He certainly left Nine in a better position than when he found it. And not every executive who has left that place in recent times can make that claim.” Marks’ successor Mike Sneesby, for instance.

Marks masterminded Nine’s 2018 takeover of Fairfax Media which transformed it into the biggest media business in the country.

During Marks’ time at Nine there were negatives. He hosted a 2019 fundraiser for the Liberal party on the set of The Today Show, which brought the organisation’s independence into question (his supporters explained it as engaging with pollies for business reasons). He must have been in the loop ahead of 2016’s bungled 60 Minutes Beirut child kidnapping affair, although others carried the can. And he left Nine slightly sooner than he intended in 2020 after News Corp began to dig into his relationship with a former colleague.

Most significantly though - and the only issue which could have derailed Marks’ ABC appointment - we now know that a culture of bullying and harassment flourished in the Nine TV newsrooms under his watch. At the very least, he was insufficiently curious.

However, there are more positives. Nine’s success under Marks came not just because of his own strategic thinking, but because he brought on a team of extremely capable executives, several of whom now themselves have the title of CEO at other organisations.

Kim Williams and Hugh Marks at ABC Offices — The content guys: Williams, left, and Marks

Plenty of questions have been asked about how the relationship will evolve between Marks and the strong-willed ABC chair Kim Williams. That’s a reasonable concern. But it’s worth remembering that when Marks was CEO at Nine and his chair was Peter Costello, he still drove the bus.

The key factor though is what Marks can do about the ABC’s biggest problem: it’s declining, and ageing, audience.

The answer to that came in Mumbrella’s 2015 profile of Marks. As Nic Christensen wrote: “Marks is a content guy”. And the answer can also be found in The Australian’s piece this week. As Madden wrote: “Hugh Marks describes himself as the ‘content guy’”.

And content is the best hope of bringing audiences back to the ABC. Marks’ mind will be on how to reprioritise the $1.1bn the ABC gets to spend each year.

A lawyer by training, Marks owned talent agency RGM Artists and ran what was then Australia’s biggest independent TV production house, Southern Star. Shows like Big Brother and Deal or No Deal set the temperature for commercial TV.

During Marks’ time at Nine, Married At First Sight became a juggernaut.

Although Marks’ background may nudge his thinking towards entertainment as being the answer to rebuilding audiences, it’s worth noting that using news as a means of building viewing habits was something Nine invested in heavily throughout his tenure.

And then there’s sport. Marks’ big move was to switch Nine from cricket to tennis in an audacious move in 2018. The calculation for the ABC is different for sport because the rights are costly, and are mostly paid for through disproportionately lucrative advertising. However, I wonder whether Marks will figure out a way of bringing some live sport back to the ABC.

Then come Marks’ weaker points on experience. He’s more of a screen guy than an audio guy. While he oversaw the takeover of what was then Macquarie Media with their 2GB and 3AW flagships, being part of Nine’s culture hasn’t really benefited Nine Radio.

The journalism being delivered by the likes of The Australian Financial Review, The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald never felt particularly within Marks’ wheelhouse within Nine either. He mostly left that to the able Chris Janz. Yet now Marks will be editor-in-chief. In March he will become Australia’s most senior journalist.

The first instinct for the MD of the ABC must be to absolutely draw the line on all forms of editorial interference from politicians and other disgruntled parties. In commercial TV, that’s compromised, whether in the interests of placating advertisers or pollies.

The key role for the editor-in-chief is to be a buffer and filter for all of that, so that the journos aren’t even aware of the shit raining down from outside. And all while making the case in Canberra for more funding.

It’s all possible. Mark Scott was the last managing director to leave the ABC stronger than he found it. Nine years on, having done it once for Nine, maybe Marks can do it again.

The Stepho mystery

Since the exit of Sneesby as Nine CEO, there have been a couple of assumptions widely afoot within the market.

First, that Michael Stephenson wanted the job, but, pigeonholed as “the sales guy”, wasn’t going to get it. However, thanks to his big pay packet (total remuneration $1.5m last year) nobody though he would leave.

And second, that despite that big salary, Nine would never push him out because far more revenue would be at stake thanks to his deep agency and client relationships. The word is that Seven has gone backwards since making Stepho’s counterpart Kurt Burnette redundant in June. (Who’d have thought that in the space of six months, the two biggest names in media sales would both depart?)

Yet one of those two assumptions is wrong. Stephenson has either chosen to leave Nine, or he has been pushed.

This week’s sudden announcement left the market surprised and puzzled. A clue that it may not have been amicable, or at the very least not properly choreographed, came in Wednesday’s 1.30pm press release announcing the “resignation”. The quote from acting CEO Matt Stanton was somewhat perfunctory. It didn’t thank Stephenson for his efforts or even give him direct credit for what was a winning run. And, more tellingly, there was no quote at all from Stephenson.

Then came the rumour that Stephenson was going somewhere vaguely competitive, but not linear TV: A platform; a retail network; an audio company; Foxtel after its likely takeover by DAZN?; a streaming service? If there is a role, the vacancy hasn’t been announced yet.

Then came the counter rumour: The media agency market see sales bosses as one of their own. They punished Ooh Media for letting Tim Murphy leave, and Seven for its treatment of Burnette. Could Nine be trying to make a forced exit look like a genuine resignation to avoid that backlash?

We may have to wait a while to find out. According to Nine’s annual report, Stephenson has a 12 month restraint period.

And almost lost in the noise this week came the departure of another big beast in media. Clive Dickens announced on LinkedIn that he’s leaving Optus. He’s the digital product guy: he was the brains behind Optus Sport and before that was chief digital officer at Seven West Media, where he put 7plus on a path to success in both BVOD and FAST.

Where might Dickens go?

He teased: “I am now going to be taking a Summer Break focusing on my Australian and International family, returning in 2025 for another very exciting new adventure - watch this space!”

Oh, we will be.

Unmade Index back in the basement

The Unmade Index closed the last normal trading week of the year knocking on the basement door.

Our index of locally listed media and marketing companies lost 0.45% to close at 427.3 points.

In the almost three years since the Unmade Index began on a nominal 1,000 points, the lowest number it has previously hit was 423.59 points at the beginning of November.

The most sold off stock yesterday was The Market, which hit a new low market capitalisation on $40m. Just two years ago, when the company was still known as The Market Herald, it bought Gumtree, Carsguide and Autotrader for a headline $87m.

Since then the company has been wracked by the forced exit of its CEO Jag Sanger and the governance scandals and boardroom battles that followed. It has also lost 77% of its market capitalisation.

Last month it published details of a new contract for CEO Tommy Logtenberg. As well as base pay of $517,500 plus super, Logtenberg will also be granted 3m shares in the company if the board decides he has met various relatively vague criteria including “being innovative and successful with marketing spend”.

Further up the index, ARN Media also had a bad day, losing 6.4% to close on a market cap of $207m, its worst since September.

Seven West Media bucked the trend of the Unmade Index and the wider ASX All Ordinaries, and rose by 3.45%.

CotW: Don’t let a car change who you are

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:

BMF's latest government work, 'Don’t Let a Car Change Who You Are’ details the common, irrational bad behaviors of people behind the wheel including tailgating and texting.

The spots highlight that the behaviours that we would deem inappropriate out of the car, are just as ridiculous and significantly more dangerous.

Unmade: media and marketing analysis

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