In cost cutting we trust: Nine sounds alarm over soft TV ad market
Catherine West addressing the AGM
Outgoing Nine chair Catherine West has echoed Seven’s Kerry Stokes comments a day early, firmly blaming global digital platforms for the misfortunes of local media, while the company told the market its TV revenues were down between 5-9% in September and October.
Like Stokes, West was addressing her final shareholder AGM.
“Our industry is facing increasing pressures from predominantly US-centric international tech platforms that have demonstrated little regard for accurate information, or Australian culture and democracy.
“Fact-checking and content protections have been abandoned. Tech giants have become flagrant in the illegal scraping of our journalism and cases of dangerously inaccurate information from AI models are increasing.”
West went on to cite the case of Google AI Mode naming a Sydney Morning Herald graphic designer as a convicted killer in error, “clearly exposing the unreliability of AI as a source for trusted content”.
It is West’s final AGM, with Peter Tonagh set to step up to the chair from today.
At the AGM, Nine also dodged the possibility of a second strike over its remuneration report, with 81% of shareholders voting in favour.
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CEO Matt Stanton’s $1.6m base pay had been the subject of some shareholder disquiet. A vote over 25% would have been required to trigger a board spill motion.
A trading update released at the same time the AGM went live, Nine reported its Total TV revenue for September and October was “down mid-high single digits” year-on-year. Nine’s response has been to increase the scope of its planned cost-out program from $90m to $100m across FY26 and FY27.
“Nine continues to find incremental cost efficiencies which are expected to result in FY26 Total Television reported costs declining in the mid-single digits (%),” the ASX report stated.
Nine Audio revenue was also weaker in Q1 than expected and was singled out: “Nine is acting to mitigate elements of this weakness through short-term cost initiatives.”
Nine’s poor numbers gel with — but are slightly better than — those announced by Seven at its AGM yesterday. Seven said the total TV ad market (not just its revenue) was down 12%-13% YOY in October.
In a separate indication that the soft ad market extends beyond TV, Ooh Media also warned today that revenue is down for the out-of-home network in October.
Questions from shareholder at Nine’s AGM included a query about cutting editorial staff and concern about taking gambling money.
A representative of the Australian Shareholders Association asked about possible investments with the remainder of the Domain sale money, and raised concerns that editorial staff were being targeted by cost cutting.
“I am concerned you might be trimming the number of journalists”
Matt Stanton’s evasive reply would not have filled any listening editorial staff with confidence.
