Fairfax and Nine newsrooms won’t combine: Hywood
The television journalism of Nine and the newspaper/online journalism of Fairfax are too different to combine into one newsroom, the CEO of Fairfax Media, Greg Hywood, has claimed ahead of the proposed merger between the two companies.
Hywood was today pushed by investors on why Fairfax and Nine had thus far been reluctant to be drawn into conversations about “potential synergies” and combining the resources.
Hywood: The processes of Nine and Fairfax are ‘very, very different’
Hywood knows perfectly well that no synergies exist other than free promos on TV for Domain. There is certainly no chance that Fairfax news “translates” to Nine news. Unless of course the clickbait epidemic in Fairfax websites reaches the point where Kyle and JackieO replace Laura Tingle.
Picking up his favourite word in annual profit reports, let’s tag him Greg “Underlying” Hywood. After seven years of “Underlying” Fairfax is pretty much buried.
Why would Mr Hywood say this – not his call and close to zero influence on the future of the business.
Ok Greg, we believe you. It might not be in the short term plan to help get it over the line with the ACCC and investors, but there’s no doubt synergersing the print, digital and TV news operations is on the cards. We’re not idiots.
Nine is not interested in the editorial teams/newsrooms of Fairfax, or the mastheads themselves (least not the print versions). They want to hoover up Fairfax for Domain and Stan. The rest just comes with the territory.
Media personnel take detailed notes – this is a lesson in corporate predatory behavior. Nines share price is inflated due to “business performance” and the Fairfax model is all but deceased.
Fairfax (left) media employees should either transition to the ABC or take sabbatical. This is no fault of your performance, the internet of things has trashed the Fairfax Print Model. I’m waiting for the pitch forks and angry mob however I really don’t think the general public care as a decreasing proportion of us rely on the traditional media sources.
Nine’s A Current Affair investigation line up circa 1920’s
Monday; Saddlers.
Tuesday; Glassblowers.
Wednesday; Wheelwrights.
Thursday; Tinsmiths.
Friday; Typesetters.
P.S. This was inspired by a previous post.
Ken.
The functional differences between TV and print weren’t insurmountable when WA Newspapers and Seven Perth merged. However it will be interesting to see what Nine does with it’s various news brands. It will have Fairfax (left), Nine (centre) and Macquarie (right). Most of Fairfax’s newspaper sections/websites and Macquarie’s sport coverage will likely end up in the Nine bucket.