"Media owners, on your Mark"

This headline occurred in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning as Helen Coonan, the Federal Communications Minister has surprised the industry by bringing forward by 2 months the foreshadowed scrapping of foreign ownership restrictions. See the article at:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/media-owners-on-your-mark/2007/03/29/1174761661302.html

I've plotted the firms mentioned in the article on the media ownership map (you may need to click on the map to open it up for better viewing). Looks complicated, because it is! The map tends to place owners spatially close to each other when they have overlapping interests like joint ownership in a radio or TV license. So one can see that the proposed merger between Fairfax and Rural press is not radical as they share ownership of a number of licenses. Likewise with APN News & Media and Independent News and Media. Seven network is plotted with Ten network and WA Newspapers, though the article suggests merger activity is unlikely at this stage. Spatially they are marginally spearated but are still part of the large cluster of owners in the centre of the map.

Perhaps the most interesting association mentioned in the article is Macquarie's investment in Southern Cross. Macquarie media's ownership has been concentrated in rural radio stations as can be seen on the map. Southern Cross in comparision has quite diverse interests in both radio and TV and quite separate from Macquarie's current interests. As my media report shows, a network analysis places Southern Cross in a very powerful brokering position in the Australian media market. It looks like Macquarie Media has made a very astute investment compared to its peers, who have tended to look closer to home for their acquisitions.

What isn't shown on the map is the private equity firms like KKR and 452 Capital mentioned in the article. Private equity appears to be playing an increasingly important role in media ownership. I can't imagine though how much more complex this map would look, but maybe I'll give it a go some time...if I can access the data!