The vote to sell Southern Cross Broadcasting to Macquarie Media Group, which will then on-sell the capital city radio assets to Fairfax, will take place today (Friday October 19). A result is expected to be known by around midday.
The ACCC clerared the last hurdle for the deal this week (see our earlier story).
At last week’s Commercial Radio Conference, Southern Cross radio people seemed relaxed about the sale, pointing out that the group’s talk radio stations will benefit from being associated with the large newsrooms already owned by Fairfax in Sydney and Melbourne and a swag of regional and suburban newsrooms in various states.
However, old timers with long memories, who recalled when Fairfax used to own radio station 2GB, remembered that it was almost impossible to get favourable coverage and cross promotion for the radio stations from Fairfax newspapers at that time despite the common ownership. They wondered if the situation would change with the new deal.
Another source pointed out to radioinfo that the radio business will only be ‘small beer’ in Fairfax’s bottom line, so the stations do not expect too much scrutiny after the deal is bedded down.
A source close to the print side of the deal, said Fairfax had a lot to gain by bringing radio’s multi-media expertise into what is essentially still a predominately print-based workforce at Fairfax.
One broadcaster wondered whether personalities would be required to write exclusively for Fairfax newspapers when the deal is completed, and if so, what implications would that have for contract details, additional payments and copyright ownership of print materials.
And of course the major issue of interest to all of Southern Cross radio’s high profile talk stars was “how soon will they talk to me about my new contract.” Many high profile stars are just about out of contract, but there have been no negotiations because of the impending sale.
As reported earlier on radioinfo, one of Southern Cross’ biggest talk stars, John Laws will do his last ever morning program on Friday November 30. After that Southern Cross will offer the 80 odd stations which take the Laws show a feed of their state morning show host. Neil Mitchell expects most of the Victorian stations, primarily Ace Radio stations, to take his show. In Queensland Southern Cross will offer Greg Carey’s show, in Perth Simon Beaumont and in Adelaide 5AA’s Leon Byner (5AA is owned by DMG not Southern Cross).
New South Wales stations will take Tim Webster from 2UE. Whether Webster is the permanent replacement for Laws at 2UE remains to be seen, but in the absence of any other high profile signings, Webster looks set to be warming the chair for some time yet.
It remains to be seen whether the regional affiliates will stay with the new network shows being offered, or perhaps take an alternative such as Charles Wooley, or even make the National Party politicians happy by going back to local programming in that timeslot.
If the deal goes ahead Tony Bell will walk away with a handsome payout amount and Graham Mott is expected to assume leadership of Fairfax’s Radio Division.
Observers are expecting the vote, which is being recommended by the board, to endore the deal. When it does the job of integrating radio into Fairfax and tv into MMG’s Macquarie Regional Radioworks will begin.