It was the regional TV signals that brought the deal unstuck.
After weeks of due diligence, a report prepared by PwC found earnings for the regional TV stations in the first months of this calendar year had fallen sharply. Likewise, news that WIN Corporation and Seven West Media were closing a joint venturebroadcasting Ten into Mildura hit hard. WIN said it was “unable to justify the cross subsidy of delivering Ten programs to the Mildura television market”.
Those, and Ten announcing it would not run The Bachelor or The Masked Singer this year, made it clear how challenged broadcasters – especially in regional areas – were.
Anchorage had been happy with the radio assets, insiders said. It had all looked good – until they took a closer look at the regional TV business they were acquiring. Southern Cross executives were said to be disappointed the deal couldn’t be done. A source close to the deal’s bankers said: “I’m sure ARN has a plan B”.
Wow, thank you.
If what we’re offering is the best in the world, then it’s a very sad state of affairs. Australian radio is extremely safe. Nothing is new, and it’s just (as I said) boring.
I find it mindboggling that some here genuinely think that an ARN monopoly (with Anchorage no more than a controlled opposition) would be better than the status quo.
Case in point, we saw this in regional markets years ago with Macquarie and Elmie Investments (the Easymix stations) - effectively running dead on mostly junk AM frequencies while Macquarie’s FM stations ruled the roost.
Shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic won’t fix Australian radio - if anything, it might accelerate its decline.
I couldn’t disagree more with this. The playlists on UK radio are far superior to the tripe that’s being pushed out here. Even if they are all national, they’re just better.
ACP aren’t interested in running radio stations. They were a means to an end for ARN to fulfil their goal of having two national FM radio networks. ACP would’ve likely sold off the assets they owned to other players, whether already in the Australian radio market, or new ones.
That’s likely. But I also think it’s possible they might have held on to them and been a silent partner to ARN for a couple of years. ARN might have even been hoping ownership rules might be changing in the future so they could buy them back from ACP.
I wonder if now this is unravelling, we could see something more collaborative from ARN and SCA?
Things like sharing Listnr, HR, transmission / distribution, buildings, IT / engineering and dare I say it programming in a third JV company…
ARN and SCA basically just hold the licences and conduct sales, the rest is handled as sort of shared services. Wouldn’t that have advantages for both entities?
…And have another MDT-style scenario, but on a grander scale? I doubt Paramount would swoop in to acquire SCA’s 10 stations, considering they’re currently in the midst of their own acquisition journey, aiming to sell out to the highest bidder.
The only winner in this whole deal would’ve been ARN. Based on what Anchorage did to the old Dick Smith brand, they were likely planning something similar for the remaining unwanted ARN/SCA stations. As mentioned above - just after what is in it for them in the short term. Anchorage have no idea about the radio medium, but ARN do. That should speak volumes in this deal.
What does this fallen deal also now mean for the below-than-expected performing CADA network? Will ARN re-invest in talent and resources for this reasonably new national network? Surely they cannot sustain that entire network based on 2x live announcers?
And what does this mean for K&J’s new deal? I’m sure ARN would’ve been banking on this new venture to help promote and further push the K&J brand around the country - especially on all the regional Hit stations. I wonder what Kyle thinks of all this? And whether or not he has any power or influence here?
Australian radio is many times better and more competitive than it was in the 90s and prior to Nova launching in 2001.
This is largely due to the success of Nova, Smooth, KIIS, DAB radio and streaming services including the Radio App, and the 2 station-to-a-market rule remaining in place to prevent higher concentration in each market.
Sydney has 7 commercial operators, as does Melbourne, plus the ABC, SBS and numerous community stations.
Few radio markets in the world can boast this amount of diversity. Of course London has about a dozen or so commercial operators , including the big 3 plus the independents and BBC.
But Australia is miles ahead of NZ radio and the US, where commercial radio is mostly all networked (apart from the odd R&B station), and there is weak public sector radio.
The biggest issue with Australian radio IMO is the fact that SCA bought out most of the last remaining DAB spectrum, when it was auctioned at the end of 2009. That’s why a third commercial multiplex auction would enable ARN, Nova, Nine, BOG and Ace to be more on a level playing field with SCA which would improve competition. It would also allow more community services, including suburban stations, on city-wide coverage like what Joy and Eastside radio currently have.
The ABC also needs to add Triple J Hottest and possibly another service to its offering, instead of using ridiculous amounts of bandwidth for some of its stations, to provide more variety and competition to the market, as their current offerings are sounding stale and boring and shedding listeners.
The control rules would prohibit that. Based on past decisions by the ACMA and ABA, programming and management must be separate. There is some scope for sales to be shared (generally national and agency only, with local sales separate). And cutting costs by sharing the remaining technical functions will provide minimal benefit given a lot of this is already outsourced.
I wonder if we’ll see Catalano and ACM come back into the picture. He was interest in the TV networks previously, albeit with a ludicrously low offer.
Expect to see the share price of SCA and ARN to dive tomorrow.
95% of regional radio is already networked crap these days.
Granted, metro radio is fairly decent as it stands, certainly in Melbourne and Sydney, when it comes to variety, and to a lesser extent in the other metros, but in most other markets there is really very little choice or localism already especially in 2 station markets.
We’re already pretty much there in regional Australia, unfortunately we don’t even usually get a nice playlist to make up for it.
Many have, certainly around here, and are now lost to radio. AM/FM is now pretty much a last resort of what people listen to when their car doesn’t have Bluetooth and they’ve thrown out all their old CDs.
