On Monday (19 November), shareholders of Australia’s 177-year-old Fairfax Media are expected to approve its A$4bn ‘merger’ with the Nine Entertainment Company (NEC). What is really an all-share acquisition will bring together the Channel Nine TV network and the country’s most famous newspapers – the Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne’s The Age, and the Australian Financial…
Gilded Naspers needs partners
Naspers, of South Africa, is preparing to de-merge Africa’s largest TV group MultiChoice whose DStv was a pioneering digital satellite broadcaster when it launched in 1995. With its Showmax streaming service, MultiChoice provides some 14m subscribers (half in South Africa) with original content and international programmes, including English Premier League football, Formula One, and Game…
Centaur Media on sale
Quick read. UK listed B2B company Centaur Media confirmed it is appointing advisers to explore potential asset sales, as part of a downbeat trading update for shareholders. The company, which made operating profit of £6.6m on revenue of £72.6m in 2017, is best known for its marketing-media information services, events and publications including Marketing Week, eConsultancy,…
Ascential digs deep in e-commerce
The UK-based £1.5bn B2B information and events group Ascential Plc has acquired the four-year-old US-based Flywheel Digital, a provider of data services and software to consumer product companies trading on Amazon. The company self-describes as “a collection of experienced practitioners focused solely on Amazon. We have spent years deconstructing the Amazon machine to provide your team…
Is this the last chance for (some) daily newspapers?
Two optimistic new media fund-raisings last week are a warning that daily newspapers must abandon their go-slow digital strategies or risk being shredded by a new wave of paid-for services. In the US, the two-year-old The Athletic now has 100,000 subscribers (60% of them millennials) paying some $60 a year for sports content, and renewals…
Hearst puts print in its place
Hearst Corporation, in the US, has acquired seven weekly news brands from Hersam Acorn Newspapers, in Connecticut. This is the fifth bolt-on newspaper deal in two years by the privately-owned Hearst and emphasises its distinctive strategy. Over the past 60 years (almost half of the company’s lifetime since being founded by W.Randolph Hearst in 1887),…
Global radio bets big on outdoor
Global Media & Entertainment, the UK’s largest commercial radio company, has paid a reported £450m to acquire Exterion, the £370k-revenue outdoor advertising group which has a 20% share of outdoor advertising in the UK and also operates in Ireland, France, the Netherlands and Spain. It has the advertising contracts for the London underground and rail networks,…
Danson does it again with data
Quick read. Mike Danson is the maddening Brit who, in 2007, sold Datamonitor to Informa for £502m, only to buy it back eight years later for just £25m. Now, he’s busy building another billion dollar research and data business, GlobaData Plc. But, meanwhile, he has just splashed $31.5m on a 12,000 sq ft, six-storey home…
End of road for Johnston Press
Quick read. Johnston Press (JP), the heavily indebted UK news group behind the i, The Scotsman, The Yorkshire Post and around 200 other titles, has (finally) put itself up for sale. The group’s collapse perfectly illustrates the decline of the regional newspaper market in the past decade. In 2006, the company had 8,823 employees and…
Skift on the runway
Quick read. Skift Inc, the five-year-old global travel industry platform, has acquired Airline Weekly, of Florida, for a modest price that is believed to be principally geared to future profits and shares. Airline Weekly (AW) was founded in 2004 and publishes a subscription weekly ‘magazine’ emailed as a PDF. Curiously, it even looks like a…
