BotW: EOFY uncertainty; and the yin and yang of media exits
Welcome to Best of the Week, mostly written on Friday afternoon at beautiful Sisters Beach, Tasmania. I’ve been away from the shack for a while and jeez, it’s good to be back for the weekend.
Today: Jobs in limbo; media’s biggest critic and biggest friend both move on; more red at the end of a terrible week for the Unmade Index.
Happy National Kiss a Wookie Day. Like that’s not every day.
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Limbo
An unprecedented number of people working in media and marketing are currently in some form of end of financial year job limbo.
Across the board, the listed media and marketing companies are staggering to the finish line for the financial year, a fortnight from now. As we reported earlier this week, almost all of them have hit record low market capitalisations in recent days.
Every board will already be considering how big to make the savings (meaning job cuts) they can announce when they give the market the bad news during the August financial reporting season. For many, that’s at least a second round.
It stretches beyond legacy media to agencies, and even into the consultancies.
Yesterday KPMG Australia told staff it would be cutting 200 senior jobs by the end of next week as the company refocuses its consulting division away from traditional advisory towards change management and technology implementation. AI is the unspoken factor – both in disruption for the consultancies, and for the biggest source of change for their clients.
PWC has already announced more than 300 job cuts this year, EY around 150 and Deloitte in the dozens.
News Corp’s restructure rolled on this week, confusingly. Nine’s newspapers reported this week that 40% of News Corp staff sales staff jobs are going, then dropped that claim and settled on 80 roles being axed. Nonetheless it’s a significant number.
More than anyone locally, the staff at Paramount ANZ are back in limbo. This week, the takeover bid for the US parent company fell apart in what has now become a farcical process.
Shari Redstone, Paramount’s capricious controlling shareholder, decided that after talking to Skydance Media and financial backer RedBird Capital for months, she would instead walk away just as the deal was about to close. Although it was impossible to be certain, that deal had looked like the one that might be least disruptive for the Australian outpost.
The focus now swivels back to Paramount’s new “Office of the CEO” triumvirate (Shari fired CEO Bob Bakish back in April) who are leading Paramount Global.
The Office of the CEO comprises: George Cheeks, president and CEO of CBS; Chris McCarthy, president and CEO, Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks; and Brian Robbins, president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon.
A fortnight ago, the trio told the company’s annual shareholders meeting they were planning $500m in cuts, but did not spell out where that would come. They also hinted at selling some of Paramount’s assets. And they suggested Paramount+ would involve joint ventures.
If Paramount+ remains as a standalone service, the company would be foolish to include ten in that asset sale. Owning a free-to-air network gives a leg-up in negotiation for sports rights under the anti-siphoning legislation.
If those Paramount+ joint ventures the trio mentioned involve the yet-to-launch locally Max, owned by Warner Bros Discovery, or similarly yet-to-launch Peacock, owned by Comcast, then that could yet be good for the local Australian team.
For now, there’s a whole lot of limbo.
Friends and critics
Two big names on different sides of media called time on their innings this week.
Scott Lorson announced he would leave Fetch TV after 15 years as a fixture in the market, and Paul Barry said he will leave the ABC’s Media Watch after 11 years (and a couple of previous stints).
Their missions could not have been more opposed. Barry’s job was to infuriate every media organisation in the country; Lorson’s was to be a friend to all.
Who will host Media Watch next?
We’ll start with Barry. For a show which broadcasts for about 15 minutes a week (plus some social media), Media Watch carries an outsized influence over Australia’s newsrooms.
There’s nothing quite like Media Watch anywhere else in the world. For 35 years (excluding the year it was cancelled by the ABC’s worst MD David Shier) the show has challenged bad journalism wherever it finds it. That includes within the ABC building. Run out of the ABC’s entertainment division, rather than news and current affairs, Media Watch has managed to stay independent and acerbic. “Everybody loves it until they’re on it” remains as good a summary as ever.
They’re big shoes to fill.
The campaign for former AFR Rear Window columnist Joe Aston to re-lace his bovver boots starts here.
A new start for Fetch
Two years on from Telstra acquiring a majority ownership of Australia’s first streaming aggregator, Fetch TV, CEO Scott Lorson announced this week that he’s off to do something else.
With 15 years under his belt, Lorson joined Fetch TV not long after it launched. He’s had a unique position in the industry. As an aggregator, Lorson’s role has been to build alliances with every player. That’s left him uniquely placed to understand every content deal in the market.
If the headhunter currently working on rebuilding Nine’s board hasn’t already picked up the phone to Lorson, then they’re not doing their job.
Meanwhile, Lorson’s successor, Dominic Arena, comes out of Telstra where he was Strategy, Planning & Commercial executive director. Arena has been on the Fetch TV board for the last two years and resigns from Telstra as part of the succession.
Telstra has bets in both of the main local aggregation plays. In the case of Fetch TV, as the 51.4% owner it gets to call the shots; JV partner Astro holds the other 48.6%.
Telstra also owns a third of Foxtel Group but seems to have little influence over the company’s strategy, including the launch of its aggregation play Hubbl.
We talked to Lorson on the Unmade podcast late last year:
We talked to Foxtel Group’s Patrick Delany in February:
Index slips as SCA and ARN both hit new lows
Australia’s two major audio companies took a further hammering on Friday with ARN Media and Southern Cross Austereo both slipping to record low market capitalisations after losing more than 4% apiece.
ARN dropped below $220m for the first time. SCA dropped to $163m.
Meanwhile, Enero – Australia’s only locally listed agency holding company – fell by 4% to its lowest price since June 2020.
The Unmade Index was buffered slightly by a rise in the biggest locally listed media stock Nine, which was the only media company in the green on Friday. The index slipped by 0.66% to land back below 480 points.
CotW: Go Australiaahhh
In each edition of BotW, our friends at Little Black Book Online highlight their Campaign of the Week
LBB’s APAC reporter Casey Martin writes:
This week’s campaign comes from Howatson+Company for Allianz.
In the first of many Olympic themed spots that we will see, this one is perfect. The brand messaging is subtle, however, you know exactly who the brand is and what they stand for the moment it starts.
The excitement of the cast bubbles as the music created by Mosaic roars into a triumphant score. It’s hopeful, it’s exciting and it is full of heart for the things Aussies take so much pride in, sport and friendship. Howatson+Company have used their craft joyfully in this spot and it shows.
In case you missed it:
On Tuesday we examined Peter Costello’s graceless exit as Nine chair:
On Wednesday, we fired a distress flare on the market wipeout currently dragging down the value of Australia’s listed media companies:
On Thursday, we talked ad fraud with one of the pioneers of agency trading desks:
And on Friday, our retail media columnist Colin Lewis explained what the entry of PayPal into the RM sector says about the next phase of the market:
Time to leave you to your weekend.
I’m zipping into the ACT tomorrow night to speak at the launch of the tenth edition of the University of Canberra’s Digital News Report first thing on Monday.
Well, third thing. First comes a 5am start for Serbia vs England in the Euros (Optus Sport subscription: reactivated); then comes a 7.30am recording of our Start the Week podcast with Abe Udy and Cat McGinn. And then the Digital News Report live stream kicks off at 9am. That’s a lot to get through before breakfast.
In the meantime, have a great weekend.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher – Unmade
tim@unmade.media
