★★★★★ 0/5

Prime Media revenue up thanks to Olympics

Revenue is up by 16% but regional broadcaster warns it can't be sustained.

2
Leave a comment

2016-11-02_1613This week Prime Media reported revenue for the first quarter of the 2016 / 2017 financial year has jumped 16% across the three aggregated markets served by Prime in NSW and Victoria.

The boost driven by the Olympic Games and changes to the regional broadcasting landscape contrasts with a 17.1% slump in profits, reported in August.

Prime chief executive officer Ian Audsley said, “According to SMI data, Prime’s national agency revenue share for the first quarter of the 2017 financial year peaked at 49.5%, following a successful Olympic broadcast. Prime’s national sales have once again delivered a strong result, particularly given the national advertising market was back 4.0% during the same period.

“Prime’s forward bookings for October through December are also tracking above prior year levels. However, we do not expect the trend to continue for the full year. History tells us that national advertisers bring forward their advertising campaign budgets in an Olympic calendar year and as a result we expect a softer second half result.

“We continue to experience a decline in regional viewership, particularly viewers aged 25-54, which overall declined 9.0% on the year prior despite the Olympic broadcast.

“Prime expects its core net profit after tax for the half year to 31 December 2016 to be between $15.3m and $16.3m. The company does not expect similar gains in the second half of the financial year.”

The announcement comes just a fortnight after Prime announced it was cutting bonuses and freezing wages in the midst of a “rapid decline” in its market capitalisation.

Source: Mumbrella, Media Week

2 Responses

  1. ““We continue to experience a decline in regional viewership”. Plus7 streaming across your territory not helping. Almost all markets’ “local news” 60-secs based on what visuals can be lifted from the local newspaper online, local ABC online, Seven News and stock footage doesn’t help either. Whatever happened to those local regional programs Prime used to produce and people used to actually watch, since they contained relevant local content?

  2. Prime says that , if they put on programming people watch, then there is no reason to change media laws. Any changes to media laws, therefore by omission, would be counter productive.
    Or they could produce a program called “cooking the books”. Oh that’s right, Prime supply’s nothing.

Leave a Reply