Southern Cross Austereo (Company)

What does that mean in plain English?

Hit network-wide ad sales will now include the three Hit branded digital stations.
Triple M network-wide ad sales will now include the three Triple M branded digital stations.

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Thanks. We have Buddha on at work sometimes, and I’m pretty sure they don’t have ads, hence my confusion.

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Easy has at least one ad every hour for high interest rate payday lender Nimble. I have to turn it off when I hear that ad.

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What’s thoughts here on Nine buying SCA?

Would it be good?

SXL on the ASX was overpriced when it listed at $4.75 by Mac Bank. Its price today is more realistic, still somewhat ‘expensive’.

Nine listed around $2 and has plummeted to under half and now clawing back due to talk of media law change. That has now happened. So where to from here for Nine?

Grant Blackley surely would be welcomed to Nine.

There are significant cost savings for engineering, sales, programming and especially news. Would be a dramatic improvement to regional local news. Yes, there would be job losses, but that’s life, has been the way for the last 20+ years.

I’m in favour. Can’t happen soon enough. Bring in the broom and make it a large one.

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I’m not an industry insider so can’t really comment on the impact to staff etc. But I think anything that gives SCA a shakeup would have to be a good thing. IMHO they need to rethink Triple M in particular. It’s just too narrow and overly male focused in the metro markets. I like what they’re doing with the DAB stations but the mainstream FM stations are just unappealing at least to me.

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While the ratings in some cities might agree, the sales don’t. At the moment, provided Triple M has the football and targets Male’s they won’t have any problem selling advertising.

Regional local news would benefit the most from this, with free reign of news covered by the reporters employed by Nine in the regional already. However, that’s theoretically something that could be done now, and will mean nothing without the work force to present local news bulletins during more of the day. A lot of the local radio news rooms are already as “efficient” as possible with a single journalist sourcing and presenting the local bulletin during breakfast and at 12pm.

Synergies between radio and TV would also be limited by the location of staff. In Sydney and Melbourne, where the majority of staff for both Nine and SCA are, there’s so way they’d be able to have TV and Radio located in the same building - there just isn’t the space, and all their current offices are new enough that they wouldn’t want to move into a new building that could house everything.

That said, there would a some opportunity for staff to work across both “divisions”, but I can’t see the job losses being significant, at least in the first few years.

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It’s quite possible Nine could/would buy SCA TV, there’s no way SCA would sell the radio assets/stations.

SCA have no interest in TV, their interest is in the radio assets. If SCA could get even a half decent price for TV it’d be gone.

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That just doesn’t make sense. Don’t the ratings dictate how much can be charged for advertising?
Low ratings surely mean fewer advertisers. Or are advertisers stupid?

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Nine’s debt is currently manageable, loading it up with more might be problematic? A scheme were SCA’s television assets are merged into Nine might be a better option (?), then Nine onsells the non-Nine affiliate stations. SCA’s shareholders would continue to own SCA radio and own a portion of Nine.

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Advertisers look at more than just raw ratings. Demos play a big part, far more than 10+ share.

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Well that’s a good thing… Especially given 2MMM is rating 4% overall on weekends…in footy season.
They are beating Talking Infomercials though, just. I doubt the demos could look that good with that as an overall market share.

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2MMM rates better than Nova from 5:30am to 12pm.
They are equal #2 commercial station with Nova for 25-39 year olds (behind KIIS). So there’s a good chance they could be #1 with Males in that age bracket given the others skew more Female.
Weekend figure is limited in information because it is 5:30am-midnight. The stations get it broken down more, and it’s fair to assume that they’d rate better during the football and other sport programming.

Sure, they’re not setting the world on fire, but that’s the information the sales team will take to advertisers. Some won’t bite, but it will be exactly what others want.

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From Radioinfo:

Southern Cross Media Group ​Limited has negotiated refinancing of its debt facility for a further three years.

The new facility will comprise a 3 year revolving $500m caility which will be used to repay the existing drawn debt of $360m and provide financial flexibility to support the business going forward.

Read more at: https://radioinfo.com.au/news/sca-refinances-debt-facilities-through-jan-2021

And SCA haven’t used that debt to buy the radio assets of Mediaworks NZ.

Didn’t want the TV assets, Oaktree Capital wanted it all gone, so it didn’t happen.

Should’ve bought the lot and hawked the TV off to another buyer.

SCA has taken a $5 million equity stake in OVO Mobile & its digital broadcasting platform, OVOPlay.

Source: Radioinfo

OVO is a MVNO. These resellers live and die by the wholesaling terms of the network they buy airtime from. Often run by wannabe mobile moguls. I wonder what SCA sees in OVO that it won’t go the way of so many before it?

Ally Bradley has been appointed as General Manager of SCA’s Tasmanian operations, who will oversee Southern Cross Television, as well as Hobart radio stations hit100.9 & 107.3 Triple M.

Souce: Radioinfo

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Mmmm, what happened to the previous person in that position? Why are they no longer there?

A “scoop” from Radio Today: Vevo have opted not to renew their partnership with SCA, which represents the brand in Australia, with a number of job losses across the latter’s digital team.

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