Packer not buying back Nine

James Packer has doused suggestions he plans to buy Channel Nine back at a reduced price, as his father once did from Alan Bond.

“I think that when my father bought back in to Channel Nine he bought back in at a time that barriers against traditional media businesses were different from today’s,” Mr Packer said at yesterday’s Consolidated Media Holdings shareholders meeting.

“While I would never say never, I think it is a different world, where free-to-air television and magazines occupy a different place in the world than they once occupied when my father bought Channel Nine back in the late 1980s.”

CMH, the shareholders were told, was “overwhelmingly a subscription TV company”, due to its 25% stake in Foxtel.

Executive chairman John Alexander said, “The story and growth of pay TV in Australia is essentially the story of CMH.

“CMH represents an opportunity for shareholders to take exposure to strategic investments in the high-growth subscription television sector in Foxtel and PMG, as well as an investment in the market leader for online employment classifieds, Seek.”

Alexander said CMH had a much greater economic interest in Foxtel and Fox Sports than free to air TV.

Packer said his resignation from the PBL Media board was an “emotional day for a whole series of reasons”.

Source: The Age Herald Sun