Broadcast-streaming. Australia’s Nine Entertainment (the pioneering TV business which made Kerry Packer and vice versa) has announced a takeover of the battered 177-year-old Fairfax newspaper business in a surprise, agreed deal worth an estimated A$4bn. The deal sees Channel Nine’s publicly-listed owner with 51.1% of the new business and Fairfax taking the rest. The merger will create one of the country’s largest integrated media players, head-to-head with News Corp Australia which (unlike elsewhere in the world) retained all Murdoch media interests after the 2013 Fox de-merger. The combined entity will take the name of Nine Entertainment Co and – in addition to the Fairfax newspapers including the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review, and The Age – will own 54% of the substantial Macquarie radio group, 100% of the Stan domestic streaming service (with a claimed 750k subscribers), and a 60% share in the separately-listed Domain digital classifieds. But some observers (including the vested interests of News Corp’s outspoken newspaper commentators) still expect a rival bidder to a deal which has been undermined by a post-announcement weakening in the Nine share price, which shaved A$300m of the A$2.2bn valuation of Fairfax. Will Amazon’s Jeff Bezos pitch in for the Fairfax news brands? What about other well-heeled business leaders in a country where successful people traditionally find it hard to keep away from media ownership? Other speculation includes the possibility of the sell-on of Fairfax’s regional newspapers, and also that there will be other mergers including even (too far, surely?) of News Corp and Seven West (owner of Channel 7 TV, Pacific Magazines and newspapers). There has also been speculation that the Aussie magazines market-leader Bauer (German owner of the former ACP, once itself owned by Nine) will bid again for Pacific Magazines. What would be a merger of the two magazine leaders might now be waived through by regulators who have got a lot more to worry about than a so-what monopoly of weekly women’s magazines. Bauer will also be keeping an eye open for any fall-out that might create the chance of entry into the radio market in Australia, to match its so-profitable group in the UK and Scandinavia. Meanwhile, the Australian competitions authority ACCC has said there will be “a long review” of Nine-Fairfax, so there’s plenty of time yet for things to change. But it does look as though the “merger” will happen early in 2019. It will, surely, not be the year’s only major media deal in Australia.What will Rupert Murdoch do with Mickey Mouse’s cash?
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Nine TV in $4bn Fairfax deal but…
