Imagine if Australia's media actually worked together
Welcome to a Monday update from Unmade. Today, our magazines, TV, radio and digital companies have been demonstrably worse at marketing their mediums than their global counterparts. Could that ever change?
A gentle reminder if you’re interested in retail media: The discounted ticket price offer for REmade expires tomorrow. Take a look at the program
What if Australia’s media isn’t as helpless as it thinks?
When it comes to the declining fortunes of Australia’s media, we’ve at least been able to comfort ourselves that it’s no fault of the industry; larger forces are at play.
But what if that’s not actually true? What if Australia’s media players could be making a greater difference to their own fortunes if they could only work better together?
The thought is triggered by a weekend LinkedIn post from the NRL’s GM of strategy Ben Shepherd. His headline posed the right question: “How come Australian TV revenue was down 4.6% in F25 when UK TV revenue was up 3.8%? It all depends how comfortable you are in investing to win.”
The answer, Shepherd correctly argues, is that the UK’s broadcasters continued to fund their TV marketing body Thinkbox.
In Australia, the equivalent body Think TV fell apart. Foxtel Media quit in anger two years ago and Network Ten followed them out of the door. Since then Think TV has been in a zombie-like situation, not officially dead but not doing anything either. The remaining owners Seven and Nine seem unable to decide what to do next.
Tomorrow marks the full year results to the ASX from Seven West Media. Which makes me think of the last update exactly six months ago when CEO Jeff Howard promised investors “improved industry collaboration”. Nothing has happened since.
In the UK, the tide appears to have turned on sentiment around YouTube. Prodded by the TV players and led by Thinkbox, marketers are finally asking sceptical questions about YouTube’s metrics, kids-dominated audience and black box measurements.
Here, at a moment when YouTube is finally showing some weakness, including the plans to prevent children from having accounts, there’s no marketing body to promote broadcast TV. As Shepherd argued:
“Thinkbox is an investment and not an expense for its stakeholders, and this is the prime difference between what is happening in the UK and how Australia is presently operating.”
TV is not the only medium where the Australian situation is worse than overseas. As I’ve previously written, magazines have surrendered their cultural relevance as a medium far more badly than they have in other markets.
In part that was because Nine and Seven mortgaged magazines’ digital futures to Microsoft and Yahoo two decades back. But more recently it was also the failure of magazines to market themselves as an advertising medium locally. I moderated more than one industry panel where then ACP Magazines boss Matt Stanton pledged to do more to market the medium via industry body Magazines Publishers of Australia without following through.
Matt Stanton is now the boss of Nine. History rhymes.
And another poor comparison with the UK comes in radio. While the local industry’s audio players are generally much better at finding consensus that their TV counterparts, a notable failure has been digital radio. As I pointed out on Saturday, DAB+ has fallen behind in Australia after a high impact, unified launch 15 years ago.
In the digital publishing sphere, the idea of the Apex premium content exchange fell over when Nine took over Fairfax Media seven years ago. And we’re yet to see anything like the Ozone Project, which represents the UK’s (and soon the US’s) premium publishers, despite occasional noises.
In all these cases, other markets have demonstrated what can be achieved when rivals put aside their differences to support their sector’s wider interests.
Sadly there is one area where Australia is a market leader. When it comes to media rivalries, we’re still world class haters.
Unmade Index dips
Seven West Media stocks blipped up in the last half hour of trading today. SWM saw the biggest rise of the day, up by 3.5% to land on a market capitalisation of $239m.
The only other Unmade Index stocks to improve today were Pureprofile, up by 2.5%, and Southern Cross Austereo, up by 1.7%. It means that the bragging rights for top audio stock changed hands again, with ARN Media down by 1.1%. SCA closed the day with a market cap of $143.9m, just ahead of ARN Media’s $142.5m.
Vinyl Group saw the biggest fall, down by 4.2% for the day while Nine lost 0.9%.
The Unmade Index closed on 585.5 points, down 0.37% for the day. This was worse than the wider ASX All Ordinaries which was up by 0.45% for the day.
More from Mumbrella…
‘A towering figure in Adelaide’s advertising industry’: Vale John ‘JB’ Baker
News code money went to shareholders or debt: Former Nine boss
Time to leave you to your evening. Don’t forget to check out the program for our retail media event REmade before the earlybird discount expires tomorrow.
We’ll be back with more tomorrow.
Have a great evening
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella
tim@unmade.media
