I recall a while back somebody discussing that the current owners’ shares in the joint venture stations are not exclusively linked to ownership of the main stations, and that they are free to offload a percentage of their 50% share in the JV, and/or would be required to offload in a sale of the main station.
What are the requirements if SCA or WIN decided to sell up in Tasmania, for example?
And what’s the story with solus markets? Do they have similar trigger requirements, or is monopoly ownership maintained?
New reporting requirements for foreign media owners
From 1 September 2018, a foreign person with company interests of 2.5 per cent or more (a foreign stakeholder) in an Australian media company is required to notify the ACMA of that interest.
The new requirements include existing foreign stakeholders making initial disclosure notifications by 28 February 2019 , timings for notification of changes of foreign stakeholder status and reporting at the end of each financial year. The new provisions also apply to persons acting on behalf of foreign stakeholders, such as executors, administrators and liquidators.
How come NWS Adelaide & STW Perth don’t get included in these charts? Haven’t they been network O&Os for nearly six years now?
Anyway, going by the chart it appears that Ten airs the most First release Australian drama, Seven airs the most first release Australian documentary content (presumably because stuff like “Border Security” counts) while all three networks air roughly the same amount of childrens/preschool programs.
Someone at ACMA has presumably just been using the same templates these past years and can’t be bothered to update them.
They appear to show just enough to meet the quota.
Your Money was counted as Australian content for Nine, but racing.com is not for Seven. I have seen racing.com referred to as a datacast channel but I can’t see how it can be as in Darwin SC only has two datacast licences and has two datacast channels in TVSN and SBN, so if racing.com was a datacast channel SC would need a third datacast licence. So, if racing.com is not a datacast channel why isn’t it counted as Australian content?
Edit: Looking into a bit more it seems they possibly only need one datacast licence, so forget all that.
Sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case. All three commercial networks would probably drop their childrens/preschool programs in a heartbeat if ACMA allowed them to, I think.
Bruce Gordon breached media control and diversity rules
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has found that Mr Bruce Gordon, the owner of WIN Corporation Pty Ltd, breached media control and diversity rules in relation to his interests in the Prime Media Group Limited (Prime).
The ACMA found that Mr Gordon acquired a 11.59 per cent shareholding in Prime on 29 April 2019. Together with his existing 14.99 per cent interest, Mr Gordon’s total company interests rose to 26.58 per cent. This placed Mr Gordon in a position to exercise control of commercial television licences held by subsidiaries of Prime until 24 May 2019, when Mr Gordon divested 43 million shares (11.73 per cent).
Mr Gordon was found to be in breach of the ‘one-to-a-market’ commercial television licence rule in eight separate licence areas during this time. Mr Gordon’s interests also caused an unacceptable media diversity situation to occur, or to be worsened, in more than 40 licence areas.
“Media control and diversity rules exist so that Australians have access to a diverse range of voices in the media landscape. It is up to companies and individuals to ensure that they comply with these important rules at all times, especially where control occurs in more complex shareholding arrangements,” said ACMA Chair Nerida O’Loughlin.
The ACMA considered evidence from Mr Gordon that the breaches occurred as a result of actions taken by a third party that were contrary to his instructions and that, as a result, he could not reasonably have known that he was in breach of media laws. The ACMA also noted that Mr Gordon acted immediately to sell down his shareholding in Prime as soon as he became aware of the mistake.
Finally, the ACMA found no evidence to suggest that Mr Gordon took any actual steps to exercise control over Prime during this period.
“Given the limited duration of the breaches and our satisfaction with the action to rectify the breaches, the ACMA will not take any further action on this matter,” Ms O’Loughlin said.
Under the Broadcasting Services Act, a person is deemed to be in control of a media asset when they acquire in excess of 15 per cent of a company which holds that asset. This is regardless of whether they can exert actual control over the asset, which is a separate test.
More than once Gordon has had to correct shareholding declarations to the ASX because of a claimed oversight. He should not be given any leeway. ASIC took action to force him to get his Prime holding to under 20%. ACMA does nothing.
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