Features

How Australia’s media companies are preparing for the media consolidation to come

The next wave of media consolidation is on the way. In this feature based on analysis first published in his Unmade newsletter, Mumbrella editor-at-large Tim Burrowes examines how Australia’s ASX-listed media companies are positioned for the deal making to come

Tim Burrowes

September 6, 2021 9:17

When the media ownership laws finally changed in 2017, it was widely anticipated that a wave of media consolidation would follow.

But after Nine’s blockbuster merger-takeover of Fairfax Media in 2018, the pace slowed dramatically. The only major deal since has been the fire sale of Seven West Media’s Pacific Magazines to Bauer Media, to create Australia’s last big magazine company Are Media. Then Covid put the deal making on hold.

Now, with the impact of the pandemic on media strategies beginning to fade, executives’ minds are again turning to the deal making ahead.

From the ASX listed media companies, the last three weeks of earnings season generated a trove of information. Not just how the companies are doing, and how their CEOs were remunerated during the pandemic, but what they say their strategies will be.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.