Nine and Fairfax Media to merge businesses

Your move News Corp.

Take that News!
I can also see the vultures (recruiters) having a field day with the unfortunate and inevitable staff cuts.

Where does this leave the Nine/SkyNews JV?

I wonder who is spinning in their graves faster – Wocka or Kezza?

Is this Stuff NZ as well?

Fantastic transaction and will be a great result for shareholders. Well done to all involved.

Sounds more like a takeover than a merger but a big deal nonetheless and strengthens Nine’s position.

Interested to see what happens to ACM (Regional titles) and Fairfax NZ. No mention of them. Is there a buyer for these businesses outside of this deal?

Not sure about the commenters above, however I felt that whilst it was falling away, at least Fairfax brought the other side of the story that News Corp was reporting. Nine are a little more right of centre than Fairfax, (correct me if I am wrong). So, will this result in the public receiving far more propaganda and a less balanced viewpoint (note Costello as chair at Nine…).

This might be a big win for The Guardian?

This is a disaster for quality, independent journalism. It’s exactly what people warned would happen when media ownership laws changed.

I feel for the staff (mostly Fairfax) who will lose out. Their management has been a basketcase but the journos have stuck with it.

Kerry would love this. Fairfax disappears altogether into Nine. In fact some of us think that was the plan when packer’s trustee was the guy who ran the Fairfax board.

This is a sad day for independent journalism. I feel like there will be more mergers (or takeovers) from other publishers in the near future as well.

Any bets on who’ll merge next?

So Hywood’s plan over the past decade has transpired. The complete demise of Fairfax is now complete. Yes, they will spin it that it is good for shareholders but ultimately what we are looking at here is the death of one of Australia’s oldest institutions. Farewell Fairfax and RIP.

WRONG! This deal was looked at about a billion times in the past 20 years (as was the Fairfax-TEN option). Despite much spruiking by certain prominent investment banker types it never had legs because there’s no value in it. A classic case of what boards and management do when they’ve nowhere to go.
The good news is that the decline of old empires is near complete. Then we can see what more capable innovators can do with the consumer apetitite for actual quality.

Deck chairs. Titanic.

Nine shares down sharply. Fairfax shares up sharply. Conclusion: drowning man is taking another with him.

Scandalous that Hywood was paid so much and will get a fat exit with this. He has cooked up Domain from the tissue of Fairfax businesses, effectively building a Potemkin village. He allowed the content opportunity to go past while he shrunk Fairfax into a mindless traffic runner. Now he has made Fairfax disappear altogether.

Shuffle shuffle

I reckon it is DEAD.

This is the question that has the most real world ramifications for people outside of Sydney and Melbourne. Rural Press/Fairfax monopolised then gutted those papers, offshored production, offered appallingly lax training to young journalists, dumped all the experienced ones, closed and centralised the presses, centralised the onshore production and centralised content management and web platforms.

If Nine doesn’t plan on keeping them then it’s curtains for most of Australia’s regional
media.

In one of the first decisions, they decide to go literally with a ‘number’ for the brand, that has no sense of differentiation from its direct competitors versus an iconic 170 year old Aussie household name who has recently spent considerable resources on ‘Independent. Always. i.e. a position! What does Nine stand for…waiting.
And please revert to NEC, just for my amusement

Too much myopia going around – this is good news in the long run given it creates a much stronger financial platform to support publishing. It’s head in the sand stuff to think traditional publishing media will exist for very much longer if companies don’t keep looking at ways to reduce costs while the revenue continues to ebb away.

The cost reductions available in the merger will help extend the runway which is ultimately advantageous to journalism. The counterfactual is not the status quo for this industry – the counterfactual is no more at-scale publishing media (and in the not too very distant future). I don’t think we want to be in a world where the only journalism is government-funded or citizen journos posting on platforms like Facebook or their blog. We need large, at-scale, commercially funded news media and it’s a hard but inevitable reality that mergers like this are the main way to achieve this at this point.

Totally agree ;(

Wake Up! Consolidating publishers such as this is the only way to compete with the likes of Google & Facebook. We all sit here and complain when really if they didn’t do this we wouldn’t have any true Aussie content left…bring on the new future of Australian media!

The disaster for quality journalism happened decades ago. The disappearance of Fairfax is not the cause of the disaster, but its consequence.

You have to go back to the 1960s to see the Herald at its peak.

Neither Nine nor Fairfax is right of centre. But of the two, Fairfax is well to the left. Or I should say, was, in the years of its decline.

9 are 100% right of centre?

FROM THE VIEWPONIT OF A MACQUARIE SPORTS RADIO LISTENERS IN MELBOURNE THE MERGER BETWEEN FAIRFAX MEDIA & NINE ENTERTAINMENT COULD WELL BENIFUIT MASCQUARIE SPORTS RADIO WITH MUCH MORE SPORTS CINTENE AND MORE SPORTS TALENT ACCROSS MACQYUARIE SPORS RADOO IN MELBOURNE, SYDNEY & BRISBANE HENCE MORE LISTENERS AND REVENUE WILL COME TO MSRIN MELBOURNEM SYDNEY & BRUSBANE

So true, you have hit the nail on the head