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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Fear and Greed summer series. I'm Michael Thompson.

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Speaker 1: Today a look at Australia's TV networks, radio stations and newspapers.

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Speaker 1: The legacy media really fighting for it's a place in

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Speaker 1: the media landscape. Tim Burrows is the founder and publisher

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Speaker 1: of media and marketing website Umbrella and the newsletter Unmade.

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Speaker 1: Tim Welcome back to Fear and Greed.

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Speaker 2: Mickey T. Somemmer's greetings, ah.

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Speaker 1: Where to start? Free to Air? Let's start? There a

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Speaker 1: lot of deals, a lot of activity in the last

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Speaker 1: twelve months. It's Free to Wear TV fighting a losing battle,

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Speaker 1: AD revenue shrinking, there's so much competition for viewers or

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Speaker 1: does it still have this role that streamers just can't

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Speaker 1: quite replicate.

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Speaker 2: Do you know what? There's so much there to unpick.

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Speaker 2: You know, if we look back on the biggest deal

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Speaker 2: of the year that involved one of the TV players,

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Speaker 2: which was nine selling at stake in domain, the real

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Speaker 2: estate platform, so that that created quite an interesting kind

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Speaker 2: of pile of money to do something else with. And

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Speaker 2: that's the question is how do you reinvent a fading

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Speaker 2: but still very influential free to air business model? Because

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Speaker 2: a lot of people, you know, every year it's less

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Speaker 2: than the year before, but a lot of people still

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Speaker 2: turn on the news at six o'clock every night and

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Speaker 2: are watching the same thing at the same time. So

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Speaker 2: if you're an advertiser wants to reach a lot of

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Speaker 2: people at once, then the best way of doing it

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Speaker 2: is arguably still television. So it still has influence.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and we are still creatures of habit. We Streaming

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Speaker 1: has not disrupted that entirely. And sport as well. Sport

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Speaker 1: has long been kind of TV's secret weapon. Is that

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Speaker 1: advantage still holding or is that starting through a road

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Speaker 1: now as well?

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Speaker 2: Do you know? Live sport is probably the single most

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Speaker 2: important thing for television now. I covered a conference in

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Speaker 2: London a while back and so Martin Sorrel, former founder

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Speaker 2: of WPP, was talking and he was talking about live sport,

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Speaker 2: and my AI transcript wrote it down as life support,

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Speaker 2: which actually felt quite accurate for the TV networks really,

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Speaker 2: because that's what it is. That's the one thing that

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Speaker 2: guarantees to prop up audience is you know, there's always

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Speaker 2: an appetite for in the summer, for cricket, for tennis

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Speaker 2: in the winter, for NRL, for AFL, which is why

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Speaker 2: those deals are always so big.

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Speaker 1: Okay, we don't have a huge amount of time, so

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Speaker 1: I'm going to move straight on to newspapers. Right. They

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Speaker 1: have been declared dead or dying so many times. But

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Speaker 1: is it feeling like we've moved past that point now

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Speaker 1: that we've accepted that that newspapers are always going to

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Speaker 1: have a place, that the circulation isn't what it used

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Speaker 1: to be, but that it still has this core audience,

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Speaker 1: and that the focus now is just on the economics

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Speaker 1: of distribution and scale and ensuring that the quality of

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Speaker 1: the reporting is still there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember covering a futurist created this thing, the

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Speaker 2: newspaper extinction timeline, and I think he declared that all

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Speaker 2: newspapers would be dead by I think it was about

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Speaker 2: twenty eighteen or something, which obviously didn't happen. I think

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Speaker 2: in Australia one of the things that kind of created

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Speaker 2: sort of far less of a kind of fixed cost

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Speaker 2: base for what was then fair Facts was closing all

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Speaker 2: of the print work so effectively outsourcing everything, which means

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Speaker 2: that as long as people are willing to carry on

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Speaker 2: paying the ever increasing cover price, and the cover price

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Speaker 2: always goes up, then you know, will be newspapers. Now

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Speaker 2: the frequency might be less, it might be more into weekends,

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Speaker 2: you know, rather than necessarily every weekday. And of course,

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Speaker 2: you know, the hopes of these publishers is that people

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Speaker 2: pay to subscribe to the digital editions instead, because you know,

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Speaker 2: there's not enough advertising going around to support them these days.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is the big challenge right across the board, really,

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Speaker 1: isn't it. And it's the same in radio. And I

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Speaker 1: want to talk to you about radio because it's been

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Speaker 1: a massive twelve months for radio. Let's start with Kyl

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Speaker 1: and Jackie O because it feels like they are the

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Speaker 1: ones that everybody watches so so closely every time that

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Speaker 1: these survey results are published. They've had just over eighteen

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Speaker 1: months now in Melbourne Signs of Life. Is this a

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Speaker 1: failed experiment? Networking a Sydney, a very Sydney based breakfast

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Speaker 1: show into Melbourne is their hope?

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Speaker 2: Yes, AOI Media. They signed a ten year deal with

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Speaker 2: Carl Sanderlans and Jackie Henderson. Now that deal only started

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Speaker 2: at the beginning of twenty twenty five and a part

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Speaker 2: of that plan was to network that show eventually nationally,

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Speaker 2: but starting Sydney and Melbourne. As you allude to, the

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Speaker 2: first few months did not go well, didn't particularly rate,

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Speaker 2: still pretty weak in Melbourne. They finished the year as

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Speaker 2: the number one FM show in Sydney though, so still

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Speaker 2: strong there. But what we did see signals that ARM

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Speaker 2: Media was kind of evolving. It's thinking. They've also taken

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Speaker 2: their second network, which I argue you might say is

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Speaker 2: now the first network, Gold National in twenty twenty six,

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Speaker 2: so we'll see the Christian O'Connell Breakfast show become a

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Speaker 2: national one, you know, with and depending on the market,

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Speaker 2: sometimes it's just a dab license, sometimes it's the four

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Speaker 2: FM license, so you know, even kind of late in

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, we saw Christian O'Connell do a pop

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Speaker 2: up show in Sydney after the radio rating season finished,

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Speaker 2: just to start introducing himself to that Sydney audience. So

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Speaker 2: we're maybe seeing a bit of an evolution of the

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Speaker 2: strategy from aarn where they're putting a few more eggs

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Speaker 2: in the Christian O'Connell basket and a few less in

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Speaker 2: the Carl and Jackie o baskets.

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Speaker 1: But still a commitment to networking shows because there has

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Speaker 1: traditionally been this idea that it is very very difficult

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Speaker 1: to network a breakfast show, drive shows in the afternoon

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Speaker 1: and being network for a very long time. In most

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Speaker 1: other day parts are all networked as well, but breakfast

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Speaker 1: is the thing that has always traditionally been live and

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Speaker 1: local and nothing else works. But there is still this

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Speaker 1: commitment to networking, clearly.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there is, and some of it is the current

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Speaker 2: relatively new management of an have inherited a strategy, you know,

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Speaker 2: as I say, with a really expensive contact with Carl

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Speaker 2: and JACKIEO, which now has another nine years to go,

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Speaker 2: it limits their options in not doing a national show

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Speaker 2: just because of the costs of keeping market based shows

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Speaker 2: going forward. So I think at some point that will

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Speaker 2: be the trend towards it. But firstly, you know, as

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Speaker 2: we got towards the end of twenty twenty five, there

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Speaker 2: were still issues with the regulator, the AKMA, the Australian

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Speaker 2: Communications and Media Authority, that are going to create some

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Speaker 2: issues around those Kiss FM licenses depending on the behavior

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Speaker 2: of that Carl and JACKIEO show.

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Speaker 1: And the other way in radio, there'll be plenty of

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Speaker 1: people watching to see what happens to the talkstations. Two

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Speaker 1: JB three or W four, BC six PR the nine

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Speaker 1: radio stations under new ownership in twenty twenty six. Just quickly,

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Speaker 1: we've only got thirty seconds left. Looking ahead to the

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Speaker 1: next twelve months, what's the theme, Perhaps which part of

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Speaker 1: kind of our legacy media is going to face the

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Speaker 1: biggest threat in the next twelve months, and maybe which

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Speaker 1: one's quietly adapting best.

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Speaker 2: I mean, for me, it still feels like outdoor still

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Speaker 2: has small growth to come. You know, outdoor advertising was

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Speaker 2: always the one where all that digital disruption could be

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Speaker 2: a good thing, because if you hon a billboard and

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Speaker 2: you can put a different ad on every fifteen seconds

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Speaker 2: rather than once a month, then you can just write

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Speaker 2: more revenues, so there's more growth to We had from outdoor.

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Speaker 2: It's probably the least disruptible medium. So if I was

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Speaker 2: to look for a traditional media where you'd expect growth,

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Speaker 2: that's where i'd look. Tim.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for talking to Fear and Greed.

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Speaker 2: Summer series always a pleasure, were never atore?

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Speaker 1: That was Tim Burrows, founder and publisher of Umbrella and

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Speaker 1: newsletter Unmade. Don't forget to hit follow on the podcast,

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Speaker 1: new episodes every day during our summer series and regular

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Speaker 1: shows are back from January twelve and Mina Thompson and

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Speaker 1: Miss Fear and Greed