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John Porter on Austar vs Foxtel

Austar CEO John Porter denies that the regional Pay TV provider is just a regional reseller of Foxtel.

There are some pretty fiery remarks from Austar CEO John Porter in today’s Australian newspaper.

He speaks out on several subjects including “the influence” of moguls, “the amount of vitriol” at the Seven Network, the shortcomings of the government’s National Broadband Network and the recent $1.3bn AFL broadcast deal.

Porter, whom the Australian Financial Review last year named as the highest paid media executive in the country, also challenged the perception that Austar is simply a regional reseller of Foxtel. Porter says this used to bother him but “not any more.”

“I think it annoys other people in our organisation. I think it annoys Bruce Mann, who runs XYZnetworks and has developed some outstanding content and channels. He looks at his portfolio of channels versus (Foxtel executive director of television) Brian Walsh’s portfolio of channels and knows he’s done a good job.

“XYZ is a 50-50 joint venture economically (between Foxtel and Austar) but the fact of the matter is it is essentially run by us.”

But even though Porter says Foxtel “won’t go out of its way to give us credit for what we do”, there is not much point in getting annoyed.

“We’ve had some of the highest returns on equity of any non-commodities-based company in Australia,” he says. “We’ve created a culture where people who work here get a lot out of it. When I’m out there unemployed, I’m not worried about if I’ve got credit for all the shit we’ve done. I’ll let the record stand for itself.”

You can read the rest here.

11 Responses

  1. If porter concentrated on getting the basics right like booking jobs correctly & allowing the correct time to do the installs & providing decent customer service he might find that sales increased & jobs are completed quicker . Instead he has some people working for austar that have no commen sense or ability to do there job as one person proved today by saying that 30 minutes was the time allowed to add an extra outlet in a house , it can take nearly that long on the phone just to connect the box. But obviously he could not care less about customer service or if the contractor doing the install is paid for their time as long as he gets his 5.3 million a year bring on foxtel as it can not get any worse!!!

  2. Foxtel and Austar need to be available in All areas. Then Porter you can say you’re not a reseller. (You won’t be a pay TV company for long either.)

  3. The reality is that Austar is an on seller of Foxtel content. I think that judging from the complaints on this site about the quality of the Austar service John Porter should just concentrate on improving the delivery of the content wherever it came from.

  4. I expect a ‘Bruce Gordon on WIN vs Nine’ interview this time next week. It’ll go something like, ‘yeah, I woudn’t expect Nine to give us credit for the outstanding Alive & Cooking.’ 😉

    Isn’t it strange that John Porter is/was the highest paid media executive in the country?

  5. Who is Porter kidding. If Foxtel decided tomorrow to stop selling sports, movies and entertainment channels to Austar they would be out of business by the end of the week. They need Foxtel more than Foxtel needs them.

  6. John Porter has a point in someways, Foxtel never gives Austar any credit, but if I had a choice between having the two I would choose Foxtel.

  7. I’m glad to see Porter standing up for his company, with it looking weaker and weaker as these merger “talks” have occured. Also good to know that Austar basically controls all of XYZ which I didn’t know. But now for the negative, if the company is that much of a good company than why is it they dont offer 4 HD channels, 1 SD channel and 1 3D channel? Why is it that Foxtel On Demand launched late last year yet Austar AnyTime has no ETA? Why is it Austar do not offer the ad features such as “Record Me” “Press Red Now For Free Sample”, etc? And finally, if Austar controls XYZ than why is it that they have not expanded their music channels since the digital switch in 2004 while MTV continues to grow, with it since than offering 1 more SD channel and 1 HD channel.

  8. They provide essentially the same service and you don’t have the choice of one or the other in any market. Both companies merely resell the content they provide, they generate effectively nothing themselves. You can only buy Foxtel if you have a metro address and you can only buy Austar if you have a regional one.

    Yet he wants us to believe Austar is not the “regional reseller”? If it walks like a duck….

  9. As a person who was fortunate enough in the past 2 months to move from an Austar area to a Foxtel area, all I can say is “bye bye Porter.”

    Your service, in comparison to Foxtel, stinks.

  10. Well he’s right in a way. XYZ networks runs one of the most popular cable networks: LifeStyle – along with 8 other networks.

    Nut Austar shares ownership of XYZ with Foxtel.

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