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Seven West Media to merge with Prime

Seven West Media is to merge with regional affiliate Prime Media in a $63.8 million deal.

Seven West Media is to merge with regional affiliate Prime Media in a $63.8 million deal and at the same time divest its interests in WA radio network Redwave.

SWM’s Chairman Kerry Stokes AC said: “SWM and Prime have had a longstanding relationship and are key partners in the industry. The combined group will cement our position as Australia’s leading content provider and presents excellent value to shareholders.”

SWM’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer James Warburton said: “The Proposed Transaction is a game changer for advertisers and media buyers and cements SWM’s position as the superior advertising offering. Overnight, SWM will be the leading wholly-owned commercial premium network that amasses a monthly Australian audience reach of 18 million people.”

Prime’s Chairman John Hartigan commented: “The Prime Board has carefully considered the
Proposed Transaction and believes it is in the best interests of Prime shareholders. It represents an
exciting opportunity for Prime shareholders to maintain their exposure to the broadcast television
industry in a stronger and larger combined group that is more relevant and resilient.”

Prime shareholders will have the opportunity to vote on the Scheme at a shareholder meeting to be held in mid December 2019 (with final Court approval for the Scheme to be sought in December 2019). Subject to necessary approvals, including from Prime shareholders, the competition watchdog and the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the Scheme is expected to be implemented in early 2020.

Seven West has also agreed to sell WA radio network Redwave to Southern Cross Media for $28 million.

24 Responses

  1. ACMA approval is critical: as a successful 7/Prime merger will be the first test of the regional TV trigger event system (implemented when reach rules were axed): which will see local content quotas increase in aggregated areas 7 will gain (Southern NSW, Northern NSW and Victoria) as well as the existing 7 O&O in regional QLD, and local content quotas implemented in non-aggregated areas 7 will gain (Prime Mildura and GWN in WA) for the first time.

  2. Prime do a local news in Wagga Albury Orange and Tamworth i believe, then a re packaged Prime national news at 630, all come out of the Canberra Facility. someone can get better figures but Primes news rooms must be costing an arm and a leg to produce, for a general downturn in regional advertising dollars, yes they are well rated with probably 3 times the audience of their competitor SCA 9, but economics would suggest they would have to look at changes, like most things in regional, the regions are dying cause (in NSW at least) the government want to pour money into Sydney and not encourage people to live in the bush, no one has money, no one advertise costs go up. My bet they will def, look at the SCA model and put that into plan. its late on a Friday night, have a great weekend.

    1. Prime has retained the news services they produced In markets they had before aggregation & have actually had the sense to do this unline WIN who wasted money on news services which were bound to fail, Look at the recent decision to pull out of Orange, Wagga, & Albury, you would think they would have known that such small markets would not be able to support a second or even third news service.

      1. I wouldn’t say it was wasted WIN has had a news service in the Wagga, Orange, Albury area for well over 20 years since aggregation. This was going to happen anyway due to the reduced revenue coming from the Ten affiliatation it’s very said to see. I hope if they choose to produce a composite bulletin they do a better job then nine that have static over the shoulder graphics and poor presentation compared to the city’s bulletins.

      2. Wins news wasnt wasted money. Figures i have obtained suggest Prime, like all the regional news (win and 9 included) are running at a financial loss, i cant see 7 pouring the same $$$ into that without cutbacks and changes, 9 at least doesnt cost them as much, time will tell. But a truly 30min regional news wont be around in its current form for too much longer. Think of the shareholders!!

    1. Well Prime gets its content from Seven so viewers won’t notice much difference. Although there are rumours that Seven is looking at launching a regional news service similar to what Nine does for SCA’s Nine affiliate stations

      1. This could be a good thing for Mildura as we don’t have a local news service WIN pulled out In 2015 although It would be good If such a service was locally produced & presented, In 2014 the town of Ouyen was nearly lost to bushfire & I had to evacuate my home at 11:30 PM I was watching commercial TV at the time & we didn’t get one warning & people across the region were not happy.

  3. Interesting times ahead. Prime uses MediaHub to broadcast it’s transmission nationally. This would be incongruous with the newly established NPC which Nine/Seven/SCA use. So expect more changes on that front. There would be some economies of scale in having Seven/Prime under the one transmission umbrella.

    1. SCA doesn’t use NPC for playout but they will around April next year. Prime probably has a contract with Mediahub which would continue under a Seven merger but once that expires it’s safe to say they will probably switch over to NPC

  4. Interesting move… But won’t this push the combined company past 75% reach? How is that going to work? Or has that been abolished and I just missed the news?

  5. Long time coming, but still unfortunate. Here in WA we’ve seen GWN cut back further and further on local content – don’t know if that’s the same with Prime over East.

    1. Here in Prime’s NSW south coast area from Sydney to the Vic. border Prime’s “News” offering is 30-secs of rip and read from the local papers and ABC radio, with YouTube, FaceBook and Google vision, recycled over and over to make up their quota requirements. Weather is often just a weather map with music. “Local content”? No, that’s it, and that’s produced and “presented” from Tamworth or Canberra. Prime Wollongong studios are now a Bunnings store.

      1. This was another poor business decision by regional networks building new studios when they were clearly not needed they should have kept the original facilities they had before aggregation.

    2. A couple of years ago, we (my parents and me) went to Wodonga (my sister was living there at the time) and there was a 30 minute bulletin on Prime (there’s a 30 minute bulletin in North-East Victoria followed by an edited version of Seven News from Melbourne). I am not sure if that is the case now as it has been several years since then (and my sister has since moved back to Melbourne), so can anyone vouch for me in this regards?

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