I realise that the first rush of the Television Mergers and Acquisitions appears to be over for now – the lustre seems to have gone off the Media, and Television (free to air) anyway.
After the recent bidding war between Win TV and PBL Limited for STW Channel Nine in Perth, and the newly announced acquisition of Channel 9 in Adelaide both by Win Television, we must come up with some serious questions about not only the future Win Television but for the whole of the Television Media Networks especially with the current public fight between ASIC, Telstra and G9 expected to at sometime result in a Very high speed Internet access for the majority of the population of the major cities – the regional areas will as a result in the short term anyway be minimum standard of net – 256k/64kBps (mind you this forgets the tens of thousands of subscribers still on dial-up).
What is going to happen now to Southern Cross Networks, now that they are fairly cashed up now ? they look like a fairly juicy takeover target to me - Ok - likely purchasers might be say Fairfax, PBL Media - maybe Telstra / Foxtel - actually Fairfax I think.
Whilst Television itself has been and to a lesser extent is the greatest single influence on our culture, the writing is on the wall, and frankly has been since the introduction of fast broadband – and with the rolling out of cable broadband and the ADSL 2+ series speeds of allegedly 24 Mbps – (this seems to be a pipe dream, as I personally live with a kilometer of my local exchange and my ADSL2+ service is almost ADSL speeds.( I shall go into this further at another time.) this will lead to not only the proliferation of the current niche specialist Video Media – TV stations on the net, customised personal TV channels, together with Video On Demand.
Since PBL has sold its media interests to private equity the writing has been on the wall, now with the further sale of PBL via PBL Media down to only 25% equity by James Packer – he seemingly is still keeping his toe in Media. Somewhat of a wise decision, its is not wise methinks at this stage to be so focused on one business.
What of PBL media – since now effective control has been lost – for the reported petty cash amount of about A$500 million dollars – what is the future of the Media interests?
Whatever can be said of the private equity – finally PBL Media will end up as a Private company – outside the regulations and reporting of Public companies and therefore able to do things and operate in a way that will not be open to external scrutiny.
So how does Private equity intend to make PBL Media pay – to start with, which is a shame – it will be all about spin off and the sale of assets, costs – reducing costs which will destroy the very ethos of Media – it will become a profit centre – with even more financial constraints and reporting to people who know little about the Media, about Television. All I can say is that they do not think in the long term – they will want it to pay, they will need it to pay, their stakeholders will demand it.
You cannot do this and climb back to the number one network in Australia if that is the goal – to a large extent Media is about entertainment, taking a chance – this takes investment and a long term view. Private equitys idea of long term view is what are our results going to do be every week, not every quarter. To me Private equity is akin to teenagers and that everything is about now.
Tags: Australia, Telelvision, Strategy
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