It’s uncommon to see Hamish McLennan within the Monetary Evaluate outdoors the “Rear Window” column, the place his stints at Ten and Magellan and his trouble-plagued management of Rugby Australia offered common column fodder.
However there he’s as we speak, carrying his ARN chairman hat, denouncing Australia’s media possession legal guidelines for stopping him from snapping up 9 Leisure’s radio property, which might, he’s reported as saying, “tuck in properly below out [sic] wing”.
McLennan’s deal to purchase Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) with Anchorage Capital fell aside final yr, with blithe assurances all spherical that the acquisition is simply on pause. ARN, the share value of which is down round two-thirds of its late 2021 highs, owns the smut-fuelled KIIS FM community, the place dozens of workers have been sacked to pay for its high presenters to broadcast folks urinating.
The legal guidelines stopping firms from proudly owning greater than two radio licences in every licence space had been
“designed final century”, in keeping with McLennan. “We should always look to stage the enjoying discipline and make it simpler for all media firms to compete.” Kyle & Jackie O on 2GB, anybody?
Given how terrible the Wallabies had been when he led Rugby Australia, McLennan ought to in all probability avoid mentioning enjoying fields, which at all times appeared to be tilted in opposition to the boys in gold. Besides, there’s nothing unlevel in regards to the radio enjoying discipline. You’re restricted to 2 licences per market, however in any other case can have as many as you want, affording firms the chance for networking efficiencies — assuming you’re not dumb sufficient to attempt to foist, say, sewer-derived Sydney content material onto Melbourne listeners.
What McLennan needs to do will make it extra unlevel by additional concentrating possession and decreasing competitors and selection. Australia’s media business is already concentrated to a grotesque diploma (ARN is a working example — Kerry Stokes and Information Corp are the second and third greatest shareholders respectively). Australia’s media business isn’t a lot an oligopoly as an incestuous household — one which wields huge energy over politicians.
That is the widespread response of media firms to competitors: to not innovatively reply to that competitors (except you contemplate broadcasting pissing competitions innovation) and work out how finest to lure again audiences with higher content material and providers, however to dam out rivals or additional focus the business to allow them to sack extra workers (or, extra appropriately, sack extra of the few remaining workers left within the business). The media is without doubt one of the extra overt practitioners of this notably Australian type of lazy capitalism.
It’s unsurprising, too, that the Monetary Evaluate offers an uncritical platform to such regulatory rent-seeking. The explanation why is offered within the article on McLennan when an analyst from an asset supervisor declares, “There must be deregulation for there to be the M&A that can assist compete with world powerhouses.”
M&As (mergers and acquisitions) generate a number of charges and ticket-clipping for the finance and authorized industries, and are beloved by the enterprise media as a result of they’ll generate infinite race-calling tales — as ARN’s failed bid for SCA did in 2023 and 2024. The pursuits of traders — a lot of whom have badly misplaced out from media mergers, particularly these undertaken within the wake of media possession reforms — and the group curiosity in sustaining wholesome competitors in essential markets come a distant second.
However that’s media coverage in Australia. ‘Twas ever thus.
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