Nine tunes out of radio and into out-of-home
You're on: Emergency Mumbrellacast time (Gemini)
We are interrupting our normal schedule to bring you an emergency Mumbrellacast, after both Nine and Nova delivered major news to end the working week.
Nine woke everyone up this morning with the news that it was undergoing a big change. First up, it has bought out-of-home company QMS for $850 million, giving it another prominent national media network, and many more screens to blast MAFS content from.
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Secondly, it has finally offloaded its radio assets — including talk back stations 2GB in Sydney, 3AW in Melbourne, 6PR in Perth and 4BC in Brisbane — to a billionaire hotelier for a cool $56 million. This is basically double what ex-owner John Singleton reportedly offered to pay for them back in September, kicking off the whole bidding process.
The lucky buyer is Arthur Laundy and family, whose son Craig assured investors they are “backing management and all employees to work with us over the coming years to grow this business.” Nine boss Matt Stanton said this is more than a sale — it’s a strategic partnership that will see Stan Sport beamed into Laundy’s many hotels, Nine journos used on the radio, and the pair team up for promotion and ad sales collaboration.
Finally, Nine has sold regional TV station NBN — which broadcasts into 29 markets around the country — to Win, meaning Nine will resurface after the sale is finalised in June as a metro-only media company.
And speaking of metro-only media companies, Nova used its Friday morning to announce a very oddly timed programming switcheroo.
Fitzy, Wippa, and Kate will be moving from Sydney breakfast into national drive, while Ricki-Lee Coulter and Tim Blackwell will take on the competitive Sydney radio breakfast market — with a national hour-long best-of show airing at 6pm meaning they’ll also maintain their national late afternoon presence. They’ll be jumping into the 6pm slot vacated by Ben, Liam and Belle late last year.
Coulter and Blackwell’s co-host Joel Creasey won’t be coming along to breakfast in Sydney – he will, however, soon be steering a national noon show, while remaining as a regular on Nova’s Perth breakfast show. But why not announce this at the end of last year, when every other network was announcing its 2026 lineup shuffles?
That’s quite enough for a Friday – please, nobody make any loud sounds until the weekend.
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