Nine inherited three big things out of the Fairfax merger: full ownership of leading local streaming service Stan, a controlling stake in real estate advertiser Domain, and the enduring hatred of News Corp.
The contributions of Stan and Domain to corporate profits were on display in the company’s release of its end-of-year figures today (revenue up by 15% to $1.3 billion, profits up 20%). Despite increased programming costs in an increasingly competitive market, Stan continues to make money off its 2.5 million subscribers. The largely digital Domain saw net profit up, proving yet again the value of booming real estate to Australian media.
For the increasingly heated war with News Corp, look to the companies’ mastheads. There, it’s journalistic hand-to-hand combat with an “exclusive” here and a spoiler rebuttal there, each weaponised to build up or tear down the trust that media need to monetise in the chase for subscriptions.
Australia hasn’t seen anything like this since the Sydney afternoon wars between The Sun and The Daily Mirror in the 1960s, both no defunt.
Between the lines
Is it just business — a hard-headed assessment from both sides that there’s only room for one commercial news media player — or is it a culture embedded in the deep history of the two companies?
At stake is a hoped-for domination of the market — maybe 1.5 million people in Australia are prepared to stump up somewhere between $300 (for The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age) and $500 (for The Australian) in annual subs for a comprehensive commercial news service.
You can see the stakes are at play when the giants clash over the big stories: Nine reports war crimes in Afghanistan (“unfair,” says The Australian, “a campaign to bring down one man”) or the Nine mastheads’ reporting on the not-for-profit Good to Great Schools Australia last week. By Saturday that had become “a hit piece”, according to a column by the organisation’s chair (and occasional News Corp columnist) Noel Pearson.
And what can any of us make out of this week’s competing claims about the Bainbridge matter?
Coming out of COVID, Nine would think it’s got the better of its US-headquartered competitor. In television, its free-to-air network, subscription streamer Stan and ad-supported 9Now are far stabler than pay-TV network Foxtel and its related streaming plays of Binge, Kayo and Flash.
In news media, the once-was Fairfax moved quicker than News Corp in meeting the demands of the shift to digital. Today’s figures show over 60% of publishing division revenues are now digital.
The SMH and The Age transitioned their audiences more readily to a business-to-consumer subscription offering than News Corp’s city tabloids. Nine offloaded its regional and suburban titles to Australian Community Media (and Stuff in New Zealand) while News Corp was mired with the “restructuring” costs of closing down its regional offering in the first months of COVID.
News Corp has traded on second-mover advantage, now claiming about 860,000 digital subscribers for its Australian mastheads (either its city tabloids package, The Australian, or both). Although Nine hasn’t released any figures for its mastheads since the 2019 merger, it’s probably about half as many.
News is also thought to have done better out of the news media bargaining code shakedown of Google and Meta, banking somewhere between $50 million and $100 million in commercial-in-confidence “content licensing” arrangements with Big Tech by including its US and UK mastheads. The Australian-only Nine is thought to be closer to $50 million.
News trades off a tighter straight-to-subscription paywall than compared to Nine’s more flexible access. It’s a straight trade-off between dollars now and influence (and, hopefully, dollars) later.
Back in the day
The News-Fairfax relations never recovered from their first clash back in 1960, when the Sydney company made the call that selling the fading afternoon Mirror to Rupert Murdoch was the least threatening option (than either the Telegraph-owning Sir Frank Packer or the Melbourne-based Herald and Weekly Times).
Through the Truth mastheads, the purchase delivered printing presses in Sydney and Melbourne that supported The Australian after its 1964 launch. It led Packer to sell the morning Daily Telegraph in 1972, creating the combined morning-afternoon competitor the Fairfax’s had sought to block with the original sale to Murdoch.
The Mirror went on to defeat the then-dominant, Fairfax-owned Sydney Sun through a mix of powerful tabloid journalism of crime, sport and scandal led by one of the company’s great editors, Brian Hogben. (Clever pricing also helped.) When The Sun conceded defeat and closed in 1988, Murdoch threw a gloating victory party for staff at The Mirror.
Job done.
Thirty months later, The Mirror also closed.
What??? $500 pa for the biased polemic and propaganda The Australian publishes?? No wonder The Liar From the Shire is given a chance of winning the election if that many peoples readily part with $500 for News Corpse sh*t.
HL Mencken said it all…The Evening Sun, Baltimore (26 July 1920)
“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
The paraphrase “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public”
To which may be added, as quite apposite concerning the former Republican encumbrance in the White House and can also be seen here with SMirko and his Brethren.
Think the ‘showman’ PT Barnum in the 19thC who may have been the original inspiration in accusing fellow citizens of being easily led and duped…. which was good for his business.
As with the AFR, the likelihood of a subscription being from a purse/wallet and not claimed as a business expense/tax write is so close to zero as to be a rounding error.
As with all First & Business Class air travel and those blasted private school fees, health care and sundry fuel, rates & maintenance of the beach house & ski lodge.
“… Sydney afternoon wars between The Sun and The Daily Mirror in the 1960s, both no defunt.”
As “no defunt” as sub-editors, it seems.
A long extinct species in the meeja generally – never present here.
As for trust, conducted in May 2018 by Roy Morgan, the MEDIA Net Trust Survey reveals that while social media is deeply distrusted in Australia, the ABC is by far the nation’s most trusted media organisation.
Australians trust the ABC and distrust Facebook the most, a landmark new survey reveals.
Conducted in May by Roy Morgan, the MEDIA Net Trust Survey reveals that while Facebook – and Social Media generally – is deeply distrusted in Australia, the ABC is by far the nation’s most trusted media organisation.
Half of all Australians (47 per cent) distrust social media, compared to only 9 per cent who distrust the ABC.
According to Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine, trust is now firmly on corporate Australia’s agenda, “But distrust is the critical measure everyone’s ignoring,” she said.
“The absence of the voices of distrust should be alarming every CEO and company director.
“Distrust is where our deepest fears, pain, and betrayal surface – the shock of discovering we were foolish to trust too much.
“And nowhere is that sense of betrayal more profound than in our media brands.
“When we subtract distrust from trust to achieve a Net Trust Score or NTS, we reveal a minus NTS for the Australian media industry,” she said.
“The banking industry has an NTS of minus 18 percent, compared to the media industry with an NTS of minus 7 per cent. So, while media industry is less toxic than banks, it is still in negative territory.
Media category Net Trust Scores or NTS (distrust score subtracted from trust score):
After the ABC, SBS is Australia’s second most trusted media brand. Fairfax comes in third as the only other media brand with a positive NTS.
SBS is also Australia’s most trusted commercial television network with an NTS of +5 per cent – well ahead of the other three commercial networks, all with an NTS of between minus 6 and minus 10 per cent.
“Australians told us that their trust of the ABC is driven by its lack of bias and impartiality, quality journalism and ethics. While their distrust of Facebook and Social Media is driven by fake news, manipulated truth, false statistics and fake audience measurement.”
According to survey respondents, their top-5 drivers of distrust in commercial television are:
…“The banking industry has an NTS of minus 18 percent, compared to the media industry with an NTS of minus seven per cent. So, while media industry is less toxic than banks, it is still in negative territory,” she said.
After the ABC, SBS is Australia’s second most trusted media brand. Fairfax comes in third as the only other media brand with a positive NTS ( That was prior to its takeover by 9)
SBS is also Australia’s most trusted commercial television network with an NTS of plus-five per cent – well ahead of the other three commercial networks, all with an NTS of between minus-six and minus-10 per cent.
“Australians told us that their trust of the ABC is driven by its lack of bias and impartiality, quality journalism and ethics. While their distrust of Facebook and social media is driven by fake news, manipulated truth, false statistics and fake audience measurement,” Levine said.
Yes but even the ABC is being infiltrated very deliberately (thanks to Scomo and his predecessors) by industry ‘captains’, handpicked as LNP supporters. While the journos do their best, we see a few ex News ones there who cannot maintain neutrality. Of course, even the pro-neutrality board memebrs and senior amangement are in fear of speaking out as if they dont behave the LNP won’t hesitate to continue to reduce funding (as fast as they can without getting too much voter back-lash)
One has to be careful as people support public services more broadly since Covid, including the ABC, but media spin such sentiments as ‘trust in government’, i.e. the present one….. (though one guesses the present govt. walked back ABC cuts due to high levels of trust in the ABC, amongst their own constituents)
Issue with the ABC is not just the anodyne reporting, lack of analysis and stacked panel shows, but the NewsCorp and other commercial media types in the background as editors, directors and board members….