Nine/Fairfax Merger superthread

Hopefully this puts a lot of pressure on News corp and help break their business model. This also weakens seven which is always good.

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This means rationalisation and job losses. Another awful outcome from the Liberal governments bad policies.

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Agree with the first point. However it would be pretty bad for the Australian media landscape if Seven was weakened and eventually would probably close down like Presto. A FTA landscape with just Nine and Ten (plus ABC and SBS) is going to be pretty bad.

How so?

While Fox Sports is subsidized by Foxtel that business model will never be broken, as for News Corp newspapers, meh, its pay wall and basically only being purchased by people that donā€™t know any better.

This is why AM radio will never be killed off :slight_smile: while there are idiots that listen to the former auction guy and baldy in the mornings then AM will rules the air waves.

Not really, Seven Media is not as extended as this new entity will be, which means advertising $$$ are not as spread thin across multiple distribution methods.

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How amusing, Ross reading from the company playbook.

I think Iā€™ll leave it to the truly independent news source, the ABC if I wanted to hear analysis.

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What do you expect him to do? Do you think heā€™s a fool?

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Whatā€™s with all the Fairfax journos crying and carrying on over on Twitter? Quite bizzare behaviour.

Whatā€™s the alternative though?

A consolidation of ownership is a less worse outcome then losing the media outlets because they are no longer sustainable

Fairfax have poorly transitioned from being a predominately print business to a media business, it was never going to end well

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Iā€™m not really sure whether I should be surprised at this news or not.

One thing that will be very interesting to see (which I donā€™t believe has been mentioned yet) is how the Nine/Fairfax merger affects their current partnership with SCA for the affiliation of regional TV stations.

As for the effects on the quality of journalism (good, bad or indifferent), I guess weā€™ll just have to wait and see what happens in the long run.

Agreed - I could imagine Seven & News Corp entering a merger/takeover at some point in the future.

I think thereā€™d be a certain level of prestige owning The Canberra Times since itā€™s the main daily newspaper for the nationā€™s capital, but not really sure about online-only publications like Brisbane Times/WA Today or regional newspapers such as The Newcastle Herald & Illawarra Mercury.

One could imagine the team at Media Watch having an absolutely ripping special episode dedicated to the Nine/Fairfax merger sometime in the next week or so! :popcorn:

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Read what theyā€™re saying, read whatā€™s on the Guardianā€™s live blog. For better or worse, the culture of Fairfax is around a ā€˜higher purposeā€™, whereas nine is about giving the audience what they want, no matter now trashy.

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However, the free news.com.au is the leading news website in Australia with an audience of 5.5 million, over a million ahead of smh.com.au, nine.com.au and ABC News.

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It gets blocked of you use adblock, I have ad away on my mobile and canā€™t access any news Corp content, gets redirected to news/passkey ad block message.

Yes I have a rooted android device :wink:

Paul Keatingā€¦ Just watching some of his classic hits on Downer and Hewson and even Howard (worst PM Australia has ever had, yep worse than go Abbott) on Google owned YouTubeā€¦ He was a master, shame we ha E idiots now in Canberra that only care about keeping their seats and not looking after everyone.

/end political rant

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Good. As it should if youā€™re not willing to pay (by viewing ads).

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Without getting into dangerous Waters NEWS Corp can fuck off for all I care, terrible company.

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With the merger I wonder if Nine will look to lease more floors of their future Sydney home, 1 Denison St, North Sydney. The future building is not fully leased so Nine has the opportunity to lease more floors to accommodate Fairfax, if they want to.

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I understand Fairfax journos have never liked Pyrmont, but North Sydney is even further away from the action (courts, parliament, etc). Would be cool to see a smaller version of Sevenā€™s Martin Place set up somewhere in the city.