Ex Fairfax boss says Jones’ apology was piss weak.

In Part Three of our long discussion with Graham Mott, he talks about the future of radio as a business, the impact of social media and what 2GB could have done better in with the Alan Jones advertising boycott by recalling how 3AW handled the Rex Hunt ‘sex scandal’ in 2006. And gives his verdict on Lachlan Murdoch’s purchase of DMG.

radioinfo: How do you see the future of  radio? Is it in trouble or will it prove to be resilient in the face of new media?

Mott: I think radio is in an absolutely brilliant position. No doubt, for a long time there, music radio thought it was going to be in trouble because of iPods, but they work hand in hand. And I think to the credit of the music networks, they have done very well in establishing high profile breakfast teams. Regardless of what anyone might think of Kyle Sandilands he is an absolute star and Jackie plays a vital role in that on air line up. But putting aside all the things he has done, and the trouble he may have been in, Kyle is an absolute star and that drives that station’s results.

And of course, Jonesy and Amanda are absolute stars on WSFM, and they help drive a great result. And so it goes on. And I think that the way a person feels about their radio station and the people on it, and the way they use radio is not changing. And it is my view no doubt that they have changed their habits on how they use print and they have changed their habits on how they use TV, but they haven’t changed their habits so much on how they use radio.

And for every other medium that has come along and tried to challenge it, radio’s advertising share has remained steady. It hasn’t gone backwards it hasn’t gone forwards it has remained steady while others particularly print have had massive changes in their share for the advertising pie.

Obviously I am biased. But it’s a dynamic business that keeps on keeping on and it has a great future.

radioinfo: While radio might hold its own as a media outlet, social media has had an enormous impact on radio over the last twelve months in a different way. I guess you could call it anti-social media that has caught up with Kyle Sandilands and Alan Jones. As someone commented at the radio conference, “Social media has done more to punish them in a couple if days than ACMA has over their entire careers.” Where do you see that ending up?

Mott: I think it is a “land of the nasties.” I think social media will wear a lot of people out.

It is hard to judge something that is fairly new. Any business, whether you are running a car yard or a radio station, you have got a growth cycle, the old bell curve if you like. And I am not sure where the social media cycle will end. But if it keeps being negative, it wont survive.

It will survive among the nasties, the negative types, who are down on the world anyway. It just gives them a different avenue now to be nasty. But if it continues to be nasty and be negative, people get tired of that.

It is the same with a radio station . If a radio station comes on every day and is unhappy, people get tired of that.

I think that is one of the examples I hear every day on 2UE. People seem to think – in certain programs – that the world is going to blow up every day. You know I have said to a few people in the past, ‘Jason Morrison goes on the air and I can’t believe he wants to start a fight every day with someone. It is absurd. You can’t be that angry every day.

radioinfo: Isn’t that what being a ‘shock jock’ is all about?

Mott: Even though Alan Jones can go hard, he can also be very entertaining. He has a great knack. He even has a corny sense of humour – and he is into the opera. He actually offers much more of a variety program. Unfortunately social media offers too much negativity and  that Is why I don’t think it is going to impact on radio.

radioinfo: Even if the that negativity causes social media to implode sometime in the future, right now its causing havoc with stations such as 2Day and 2GB…

Mott: I dropped a text to Russell Tate last week. ‘What are you blokes doing taking the commercials off? Don’t give in to the vocal minority is what I say.’

Most of the people who would be on the petition to get Jones sacked wouldn’t even listen to the station- wouldn’t even be impacted by it, yet they decide to be offended. And quite rightly. That’s fair enough, because Jones’ comments were terrible.

I also thought that the way 2GB handled that situation was appalling. It was a good example of how not to do it. Jones should have made a humble apology and then he should have not referred to it again. He should have moved on. But 2GB kept the story alive by adding something every day and a couple of 2GB people would have us believe they are actually the victims. Give me a break!

But if a radio station pulls its advertising off because of social media, that’s giving in to the vocal minority and it is setting a precedent for the future which is very dangerous

radioinfo: What do you think they should have done?

Mott: I would think that they are a smart operation and they will go and review how they played all this out and what they should do when they get the next wave of attack. I think they set themselves up for the next wave of attack by giving in in the first place and taking the commercials off. That’s the problem I think they have set up for themselves. I know that they did it to protect the advertisers. But is that what the advertisers really wanted?

radioinfo: A few advertisers have stuck by Jones and his right to speak his mind, but many others, particularly the national ones have said that they are not endorsing Jones’ politics, they are only there to reach an audience, and the last thing they need is controversy. The question is, will these advertisers come back to GB, go to other stations or dump radio altogether and go to other media?

Either way, in the meantime, social media is a reality and it is costing radio huge bucks.

Mott: It is, and I think that Austereo handled their situation with Kyle a lot better than 2GB has handled their situation with Jones. And SCA’s CEO Rhys Holloran has said it cost them a lot of money. And I guess in some ways you might say, ‘they deserved it.’

What Kyle said and what he did was unacceptable. It was totally unacceptable and he went too far. But here’s the thing. We all, at times make terrible mistakes, we all at times say something terrible to our wives or girlfriends or people close to us and we go, “Oh my god I wish I wouldn’t have said that”. You have to make a humble apology and you have to make it very quickly. That’s what you’ve got to do and then you’ve got to move on.

Unfortunately when you have a 45 minute dissertation going over old ground where you criticise Julia Gillard your apology is what I quite frankly call piss weak. You are never going to win. You have got to say you are sorry.  You have got to mean it and then you can move on. Until you do that you can’t move on and I think that was the major mistake that was made.

I think that Kyle’s apology was pathetic as well. And that is the problem. I will give you an example. When Rex Hunt had his so called sex scandal some years ago. He felt sorry for the fact of what he did. He genuinely felt sorry that he had embarrassed his wife, he embarrassed himself and he embarrassed his kids. And I said, “You have got to tell the people that. That is what you have to tell them.”

We made sure that he made a humble apology and the good thing about it was, as I said to him, “What more can they do to you? We handled that really, really well in the sense that it was a crisis – we got so many faxes, emails and phone calls – you wouldn’t believe the correspondence we got. That’s how we knew that the natives were restless.

So we said to Rex, “You will make an apology. Here is how you will do it. You will do it on the Neil Mitchell program. And when you make that apology, your wife will be sitting beside you.

But Rex didn’t want to embarrass her and I said, “Rex, if she is not sitting beside you when Neil asks you how she feels about it – no one will believe what you say. You have to have your wife sitting there.”

Of course she turned out to be the star of the interview. See when you make a mistake you have to plan out how you are going to get yourself out of it and sometimes you have to play to the letter of the law in what you agree on. So in a sense I think these things are great exercises – the SCA situation with Kyle and the 2GB situation with Jones.

radioinfo: There are two major problems that the people I’ve talked to see. First is that if this social media vigilante mob gets a taste for this so that they get offended by smaller and smaller things all the time, radio will be forced to lose all its edge – announcers will be too afraid to say anything on air that might offend somebody who doesn’t listen.

Which leads to the second problem, that your non-listeners will have more influence over the radio station than your actual listeners.

Mott: I believe that radio operators have to be smart enough and they have to have the courage and the guts of their convictions. You cannot have the vocal minority dictate what you do and that is the key and essence. It is a key mistake to take the advertisers off the air in general to give in to the vocal minority. If you were to program your radio station on the minority you would be a losing business – you wouldn’t have ratings you wouldn’t have clients.

radioinfo: What is coming up next for you, or are you retired now?

Mott: What is coming up for me is that I am taking a break.  I have been doing some small advisory work for people that would like to buy into electronic media because at the moment it wouldn’t be all that expensive to get into. But they also have to have realistic expectations of the return they will get.

radioinfo: Speaking of which, how good a deal did Lachlan Murdoch do buying DMG?

Mott: Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant – and it just highlighted how badly they overpaid for the licenses in the first place – which, by the way, we were all saying at the time. When you consider that he got the lot… I think it was for 220 or 240 million and that DMG had paid 155 for the first licence in Sydney which ended up being NOVA and 106 for what ended up being smooth. That’s 261 in Sydney for two  licenses for businesses that weren’t even on the air, didn’t have studios, didn’t have staff and Murdoch paid 220 or 240 for the lot… that gives him two stations in Sydney, two in Melbourne, one and a half in Brisbane, half of one in Perth and two in Adelaide. I mean, you look at that and you think, what a mighty deal, but it certainly does highlight the overpayment that was made in the first place.

radioinfo: And that licence values are dwindling as we speak.

Mott: They absolutely are. And it has been my long held view that  Southern Cross shareholders were very fortunate that Fairfax shareholders paid such a high price for Southern Cross radio stations. But unfortunately it does make it difficult for Fairfax.

radioinfo: Getting back to what’s next for you… what would you like to do?

Mott: I am not sure what I want to do, but I know what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to be in the kind of role that I was in. I don’t want to have that level of responsibility ever again.

And that was driven home to me as I was fighting cancer. Life is way too short to do the things you don’t want to do.

I have given quite a bit of advice to different people and sometimes I think I should be charging for that. But I haven’t. I am very committed to the business and the people in it, and I am happy to help. But for me, I hope it is not the last chapter in my career. But if it is then that’s ok.

So where that puts me next, I am not quite sure. But as long as I remain happy and healthy that is a fantastic start and I reckon I am 90% of the way there.

Read Part One. Part Two

Peter Saxon