As we settle down the annual bun and choccie fest, take a moment to mourn a significant species loss for the Australian economy and business: the rampant, world-striding Aussie media mogul.
Nowhere has this extinction event been more obvious than the complete absence of an Aussie name or ‘figure’ from the list of possible contenders for Britain’s Channel 4 TV operation, which a desperate Boris Johnston wants to sell.
Johnston hopes to get around a billion pounds for the channel which has been owned by the UK government as an advertising supported contender to the BBC and ITV for 40 years.
In the past a parade of Aussie names and companies would have been mentioned in any speculation – The Packer family – not now as James Packer tries to exit Crown Resorts and its dodgy casinos; Kerry Stokes and Seven West Media? Nope because Seven West is still on the edge and Stokes is more interested in moving rocks and dirt via its Caterpillar, Coates hire and Boral companies, plus oil and gas.
Alan Bond had a stake in British Broadcasting for a while – it was later taken over by Murdoch’s Sky and buried. The late Sam Chisholm whipped Sky into shape and terrorised the entire British media for a while.
But Bondy’s long dead, as are Sam and even Christopher Skase. The Lowys lost a truckload in Ten in the late 80’s and early 90’s and have gone private, selling off control of their shopping centre empires.
All of which means at present there is no one from down under who can inspire similar feelings of shock and awe in the media these days.
The Murdochs and News Corp/Fox Corp are so much on the nose, especially with the legacy phone hacking claims from the News of the World and The Sun still passing through the British legal system. The Murdochs and News Corp have been trying to return to UK TV via another route – talkTV – a weak clone of Fox News.
So the contenders for Channel 4 are US or UK companies and the odd European media giant who could have a better chance the most to buy. But even then there’s a list of obstacles that might be hard to overcome.
Comcast (which bought Sky), Discovery (which has just absorbed Warner Media as of last Friday) and Paramount (which owns CBS and Ten in Australia) have been tipped as potential Channel 4 buyers by some commentators (especially American).
Because it owns Sky, Comcast won’t make it, nor the Discovery-Warner Media group because the takeover has to be bedded down at great cost (billions of dollars and lots of jobs). Paramount is trying to get its streaming business rightsized and it already owns Channel 5 in Britain (which is lumped in with network Ten inside paramount).
In the past Mediaset, controlled by Silvio Berlusconi, would have been whispered by the media. But he and his media empire are faded glories now.
The dominant UK commercial network, ITV is tipped by a few, but media concentration fears would rule it out (the two would control 70% of the UK commercial TV ad market). UK print companies such as the Daily Mail group DMG) might be a contender, but it also has severe problems with falling print sales of its papers, more investment for the Daily Main Online business and the closure of the ambitious DailyMailTV daily show in the US shortly after five years of trying to get it to work and losing money.
Looking beyond the UK and US, interest could come from European media groups such as Vivendi, which controls one third of key Channel 4 supplier Banijay, and RTL parent Bertelsmann, which owned Channel 5 between 2005 and 2011.
Channel 4 might look good on paper but the UK government will have to change some rules governing its business activities if it is to get anywhere near the 1-billion-pound price. First up Channel 4 will have to be allowed to produce programs in-house and own the rights.
At the moment almost all its major programming is produced externally with the rights owned by the producers such as Banijay (which owns Shine, the old Murdoch family company which is the major program producer in Australia) and Fremantle which is owned by Bertlesman, which was a former owner of Channel 5.
Sorting out the production and program rights will be essential to get full value or a weak price by the government. (Channel 4 has to be allowed to produce, commission and own programs and their syndication and sales to other broadcasters such as the ABC and SBS in Australia, to streamers like Netflix or BritBox – the JV between the BBC and ITV).
Private equity from the UK, Europe or the US could end up being the winner – there are so many of them that picking a winner is like finding an Australian media mogul with the money and interest.
