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News Corp not keen on buying Seven

News Corp exec says no deal on Free to Air acquisition.

Rupert Murdoch-controlled News Corp is not interested in buying Seven West Media, according to a report today.

News Corp Australasia’s executive chairman Michael Miller has told The Sydney Morning and The Age, “We have been consistent with what our priority is. We also have good confidence in Foxtel as a long-term subscription model and Kayo has had a great start to the first two rounds of the NRL.”

Seven has also been looking to sell production arm Seven Studios and its Digital Venture portfolio, which includes Airtasker, to drive down debt. Pacific Magazine has been give the all clear by the ACCC to sell to Bauer Media, but there is speculation as to whether that will proceed -Bauer has shut down its NZ magazine production.

CEO James Warburton recently sold the WA radio business, Redwave, for $28m, but a ray of light in the form of the Olympics has now been pushed back to 2021.

Last week Seven also asked staff to take a 20% pay cut and begin to utilise annual leave.

Seven West Media Shares are at around 7c.

9 Responses

  1. “…confidence in Foxtel as a long-term subscription model”

    Kayo had more than 370,000 subscribers as of February down from 402,000 in November 2019.

    Foxtel’s subscribers were 2.2 million in December down from 2.3 million in September.

    The final quarter of 2019, Foxtel’s revenue fell US$61m

    Foxtel might’ve misjudged it’s confidence

  2. Why would anybody want to buy into Broadcast TV? Especially Seven which is losing lots of money, along with the rest of Seven West Media which they are trying to flog off bit by bit.

    The future is streaming which Foxtel is preparing for with Kayo and Project Aries. Their competition is Netflix not FTA now. News Corp. doesn’t have the money to buy Seven just to run Sky News as a vanity project anymore.

    1. everyone’s old mate Bruce would love a metro network. He has a thing for 9 still, even though they are not up for sale, but he would love his WIN network to aligned with 9 again… but he could sell WIN to network TEN, then buy 7 at a reduced $$ and since he is a major shareholder of Prime he could merge those later, since he stopped 7’s take over of Prime earlier in the year. Let it play out

    2. … but poor Bruce mustn’t have any money based on a SMH story by Zoe Samios today headlined “Regional media broadcasters to shut down signals, end bulletins” and saying “Prime Media Group, WIN Corp and Southern Cross Austereo are asking the Morrison government to underwrite their businesses”. Mind you, she also writes “This would leave the ABC as the sole broadcaster of regional television news.” … er the ABC hasn’t actually broadcast any regional television news bulletins since the 70s!

  3. Could be that Mr. Murdoch speculated he could grab himself a bargain, but the current COVID-19 downturn in the global economy could make Seven West Media an even better bargain for News Corp in the near future.

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