Nine still the one, with local single market monopoly ambitions and potential
Let’s not be too critical of the Fairfax Nine merger – it may prove to save quality local news and entertainment content, writes The Studio’s Chantal Abouchar.
Sir Frank Packer started his working life in the early 1920s as a cadet journalist on his father’s newspaper. By 1956, following a Royal Commission into television, Frank was deemed suitable to apply a television licence, as were other newspaper proprietors.
The mythology goes that television was considered so risky that the banks had doubts about backing a television station, which would be only one of two allowed in each capital cities along with the ABC. Ironically, we now know that for most of their life, until the rise of the internet and the advertising black holes of Google and Facebook, television licences were nothing but a licence to print money.
However, as has been the case for their older newspaper counterparts, like Fairfax, the television networks have struggled to adapted fast enough to the new threat environment.
