Antony Catalano and Bruce Gordon attempt to block Seven’s Prime Media takeover
Australian Community Media (ACM) boss Antony Catalano and WIN Corporation owner Bruce Gordon have both made moves to block the merger between Seven West Media and Prime, with a Prime Media release making its way to the Australian Stock Exchange this morning stating that in light of recent press reports the merger is currently under “consultation”.
The disquiet follows the promise of a $0.03-per-share fully franked special dividend to Prime Media shareholders should the acquisition be approved this month.
Seven wants to offer advertisers one entry point to Australia’s wider regional market with the Prime merger
How good is The Cat??!! He can do no wrong!!!!
How good is Gordon? He seems to own just enough of every media company to dictate the landscape. Catalano is a pawn, always has been.
Catalano seems to always be a blocker rather than an enabler in the Australian media landscape.
This is pathetic. Gordon and Catalano expect that the Government will allow them to reduce controls of regional media to give them monopoly power. If the Government does that they should expect that businesses in the bush will belt them extremely hard. Consumers of course will be left with even worse local TV than they get now. The bonus, presumably, is a further reduction in news coverage.
They can screw up Stokes’ bid. But they should get a firm no from the Government on wrecking what’s left of media in the regional areas.
Investor, I don’t think you get it … the regional media industry is now almost totally controlled by a handful of people based in Sydney and the 7 takeover will just entrench that. At least what Prime, WIN and Catalano are proposing would allow regional media to stay in the hands of regional people, something that “businesses in the bush” would applaud.In fact it’s a return to what regional TV operators proposed back in 1984 but were rolled by an ALP government led by Bob Hawke that wanted Kerry Packer’s help to get re-elected so torpedoed what was at the time a very profitable business giving regional viewers real “local TV”.
Ex_ABC: you do not actually think Catalano (purported buyer of a $30m St Kilda apartment) is rural? Or Bruce Gordon (permanent resident of the Bahamas)? Maybe John Hartigan of Paddington? Whaaatt?
GOOD!!! The last thing we need is LESS media diversity. I don’t give a ratz who blocks or pawns who, its just refreshing that Warburton doesn’t just steamroll his way through this one.
This disaster for SWM resulted from stupidity by SWM for years . The Seven group held 11.38% of Prime capital until late 2017, when they sold. Dumb as Catalano was not on the Prime register and Bruce Gordon was 2.5% . Now ACM will merge with Prime TV first, gaining the regional dales and corporate structure synergies that SXL enjoys in regional Australia selling radio and TV locally. Then the combined group, after synergies may still need to be purchased by SWM . But SWM could have done Prime without competition, had the SWM Board been as bright as the NEC Board.
Your history is sound, but it remains to be seen how much local content would appear under any particular ownership.
WIN and SCB each currently have one commercial TV monopoly market. Only the latter has local news.
If WIN bought Prime, there would probably be less local bulletins in NSW, but quite possibly more local stories filmed.
If ACM bought Prime, it could mean newspaper stories appearing on TV in many markets.