Nine CEO Mike Sneesby calls on govt to ‘use all the powers available to them’ on Meta news ban
Nine CEO Mike Sneesby says the Government must ‘use all the powers available to them’ regarding Meta’s news ban that has seen publishers all around Australia hand out redundancies due to the move.
Media giants like Nine Entertainment, Seven West Media and News Corp Australia have been rolling out redundancies over the last few months, which are attributed to Meta axing news from its platform, first announced back in March.
Nine’s publishing division alone has seen 85 redundancies, while only earlier this month the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) secured pay rises and improved conditions for its Nine journalists after a five-day strike.
Meanwhile, in its latest financials announced on Wednesday, it was confirmed that Nine Publishing, which covers the mastheads and Drive, saw total revenue drop by 3%, and earnings down by 7%.
Speaking on a media call shortly after the release of the results, Sneesby told Mumbrella the company is in “continued dialogue” with the government and Facebook about the Meta situation.
“Our dialogue with the government is very much focused on the need for the government to ensure that they use all the powers available to them under the news media bargaining code to ensure that we get a fair and level playing field,” he said.
“But also, we’re strongly encouraging the government to look at additional measures beyond the news media bargaining code to ensure that we create a level playing field and a fair playing field for local media companies.
“That’s obviously in the interest of the Australian public and certainly in the interest of general public interest journalism.”
It should be noted that despite this, a Meta spokesperson told Mumbrella in July: “At the moment all options are on the table,” adding that they never said they were ‘axing’ news but are “exploring all options” regarding serving news on their platform.
Earlier on Wednesday in an investors call, Sneesby also addressed the “very public commentary” surrounding allegations of inappropriate behaviour and misconduct at Nine, which has led to an internal investigation – including a dedicated hotline to report sexual harassment and an organisation-wide survey – as well as an external investigation conducted by consulting firm Intersection.
Though it was expected the findings of the review would be completed by the end of July, Sneesby gave no timeline for its release.
“We take these comments and the feedback from our team members incredibly seriously and have worked with industry leading third parties to understand the extent of any issues and similarly to ensure our processes and culture encourage an inclusive and positive working environment,” Sneesby said.
“We have committed to sharing the outcomes of these reports with our people when they’re available.”
Listen to more of Sneesby’s comments on the latest episode of the Mumbrellacast.
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Sorry 9, you aren’t entitled to anything.
Instead if relying on other companies to support you, how about improving your offerings with some quality and integrity to attract lost viewers? Radical concept, may just work.
When a company starts spending more time asking for protection than talking about what they are going to do about it. Run for the hills.
When a company starts talkimng about wanting an “even playing field”. Run for the hills.
When olympic torches and commitments to old men in Lausanne are more important than commitments to your teams. Run for the hills.
I’d probably use Facebook a lot more if they took the News content off it.
Have to agree with Alberto’s comment…stopped watching most free to air, not to migrate to social media, but because most of what is offered on Channel 9 and cohorts is unmatchable trash…watching MAFS for example (one of many) is an exercise in brain damage. Put some great content on, then people might actually watch, and therefore increase your advertising revenue (and no, news cycles repeated endlessly are not the answer either)
Never gonna happen Big Sneeze!
Bring back Scomo he did the meta deal clearly Albo doesn’t care.
30 minutes of 2nd rate programming and 30 minutes of promos and nauseous repeat of ads. I’d suggest is not user friendly to advertisers and certainly not the viewer.
Why are we just blankly accepting that the recent swathe of redundancies across these companies was exclusively due to the Meta money coming off the table? It definitely contributed to it, but the consistent decline in revenue and audience migration away from traditional formats (linear, newsprint) has just as much to do with it. Most of these large media corporations have antiquated structures baked in to their operating models. They are, collectively, too timid (or comfortable, at the top) to make radical changes and instead continue to slowly downsize while asking their teams to do more with less and an increasingly competitive and challenging landscape. I get it, if I was at the top of one of these orgs, making a heap of money and strolling towards retirement, I wouldn’t want to rock the boat either.