Why is the answer always more media concentration?
It’s unusual to see Hamish McLennan in the Financial Review outside the “Rear Window” column, where his stints at Ten and Magellan and his trouble-plagued leadership of Rugby Australia provided regular column fodder.
But there he is today, wearing his ARN chairman hat, denouncing Australia’s media ownership laws for preventing him from snapping up Nine Entertainment’s radio assets, which would, he is reported as saying, “tuck in nicely under out [sic] wing”.
McLennan’s deal to buy Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) with Anchorage Capital fell apart last year, with blithe assurances all round that the acquisition is only on pause. ARN, the share price of which is down around two-thirds of its late 2021 highs, owns the smut-fuelled KIIS FM network, where dozens of staff have been sacked to pay for its top presenters to broadcast people urinating.
The laws preventing companies from owning more than two radio licences in each licence area were
“designed last century”, according to McLennan. “We should look to level the playing field and make it easier for all media companies to compete.” Kyle & Jackie O on 2GB, anyone?
Given how awful the Wallabies were when he led Rugby Australia, McLennan should probably steer clear of mentioning playing fields, which always seemed to be tilted against the men in gold. Except, there’s nothing unlevel about the radio playing field. You are limited to two licences per market, but otherwise can have as many as you like, affording companies the opportunity for networking efficiencies — assuming you’re not dumb enough to try to foist, say, sewer-derived Sydney content onto Melbourne listeners.
What McLennan wants to do will make it more unlevel by further concentrating ownership and reducing competition and choice. Australia’s media industry is already concentrated to a grotesque degree (ARN is a case in point — Kerry Stokes and News Corp are the second and third biggest shareholders respectively). Australia’s media industry isn’t so much an oligopoly as an incestuous family — one that wields massive power over politicians.
This is the common response of media companies to competition: not to innovatively respond to that competition (unless you consider broadcasting pissing competitions innovation) and figure out how best to lure back audiences with better content and services, but to block out competitors or further concentrate the industry so they can sack more staff (or, more correctly, sack more of the few remaining staff left in the industry). The media is one of the more overt practitioners of this particularly Australian form of lazy capitalism.
It’s unsurprising, too, that the Financial Review gives an uncritical platform to such regulatory rent-seeking. The reason why is provided in the article on McLennan when an analyst from an asset manager declares, “There needs to be deregulation for there to be the M&A that will help compete with global powerhouses.”
M&As (mergers and acquisitions) generate lots of fees and ticket-clipping for the finance and legal industries, and are beloved by the business media because they can generate endless race-calling stories — as ARN’s failed bid for SCA did in 2023 and 2024. The interests of investors — many of whom have badly lost out from media mergers, especially those undertaken in the wake of media ownership reforms — and the community interest in maintaining healthy competition in important markets come a distant second.
But that’s media policy in Australia. ‘Twas ever thus.
Have something to say about this article? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
