News Media Ownership in New Zealand Bill Rosenberg
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News media ownership in New Zealand Bill Rosenberg Introduction................................................................................................................... 1 Who owns what? .......................................................................................................... 2 Print media................................................................................................................................. 2 John Fairfax Holdings Limited................................................................................................ 2 APN News and Media............................................................................................................ 5 Allied Press and remaining independents ............................................................................. 7 Magazines.............................................................................................................................. 8 Television................................................................................................................................. 12 MediaWorks: TV3 and C4.................................................................................................... 12 Prime Television................................................................................................................... 13 Digital television – Freeview ................................................................................................ 15 Other free-to-air television ................................................................................................... 16 Pay TV.................................................................................................................................. 20 Radio........................................................................................................................................ 22 The Radio Network .............................................................................................................. 23 RadioWorks.......................................................................................................................... 24 An alternative – Community Access Radio.......................................................................... 26 Internet..................................................................................................................................... 27 The international news agencies............................................................................................. 30 The media moguls: who are they?............................................................................ 32 Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation.................................................................................. 32 O’Reilly, Clear Channel Communications ............................................................................... 38 O’Reilly................................................................................................................................. 38 Clear Channel Communications .......................................................................................... 42 Fairfax...................................................................................................................................... 45 CanWest .................................................................................................................................. 51 The private equity investment corporations............................................................................. 57 Does ownership matter?............................................................................................ 60 Acknowledgements.................................................................................................... 68 Appendix: Print ownership........................................................................................ 69 Endnotes ..................................................................................................................... 71 13 September 2008 Introduction Four companies, all overseas owned, dominate the New Zealand news media. There is a near duopoly in two of the three main media – print and radio – a monopoly in pay television, and only three significant competitors in free-to-air television including the state-owned channels. Each daily newspaper has a near monopoly in its main circulation areas. This paper describes the ownership in each of these media, with a brief discussion of the internet, then backgrounds each of the four main owners, and finally discusses whether ownership of our news media matters. John Fairfax Holdings Ltd owns newspapers which in 2008 had nearly half (48.6%) of the daily newspaper circulation in New Zealand. Its main newspaper competition is from APN News and Media (ANM), which had 42.4% of the daily newspaper circulation in 2008 (27.7% of which came from the New Zealand Herald, the largest circulation daily newspaper in New Zealand) and substantial radio holdings. The two between them in 2008 owned 86.9% of audited daily press circulation of the provincial newspapers (those with under 25,000 circulation), and 92.2% of the metropolitan readership (those newspapers with more than 25,000 circulation)1. In addition they have extensive and increasing ownership of community newspapers, and magazines. ANM’s main competitor in commercial radio is MediaWorks, owned by Australian private equity corporation Ironbridge. MediaWorks owns the other of the two largest radio networks, and two television channels. Its competitors in television are state- owned television, plus the News Corporation controlled Sky Television, which has a monopoly on pay television and also owns Prime Television. 1 13 September 2008 Who owns what? Print media Only about 60,000 readers still have an independent daily newspaper – 10,000 less than in 2001 (though total audited daily readership has also dropped by 72,000 in that time). Fairfax and ANM share the remainder. John Fairfax Holdings Limited John Fairfax Holdings is an Australian company which bought its New Zealand empire in June 2003 for $1.188 billion from Independent Newspapers Ltd (INL, controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation with a 45% shareholding at the time). Fairfax owns the largest circulation South Island newspaper, the Christchurch Press, winner of the Qantas Media Award for newspaper of the year in 2006 and 2007, which has a near monopoly in Christchurch. It owned both the Dominion and the Evening Post, Wellington’s only morning and evening dailies, until it closed the Evening Post in June 2002 because of falling advertising revenue, renaming the Dominion the Dominion Post2 to become its best selling daily. In fact it owns all the daily newspapers with circulation greater than 25,000 other than the New Zealand Herald and Hawke’s Bay Today (ANM) and the Otago Daily Times. It is probably the largest publisher of New Zealand’s newspapers, magazines and sporting publications. In 2008 it had 71.8% of the audited circulation of the country’s five national weekly newspapers3 and in 2006 15% of magazine revenue4. In December 2006 Fairfax in Australia acquired Rural Press which owns New Zealand Rural Press, publisher of seven titles including Straight Furrow and 6% of the magazine market revenue, making Fairfax the largest magazine publisher in New Zealand. Rural Press also owns regional radio stations and agricultural publications in the US5. Fairfax’s print and internet media in New Zealand are detailed in the accompanying tables. Its magazines include some of the country’s largest selling publications, such as Skywatch (2008 circulation 290,843 paying readers and 516,010 in total) and TV Guide (in 2008, 179,724 paying readers), and it has a virtual newspaper monopoly in many cities and in the national Sunday newspapers, including the Sunday Star-Times, the second largest selling newspaper in New Zealand (176,020 in 2008)6. Its Sunday dominance is challenged only by the Herald on Sunday which circulates largely in the Auckland area. Fairfax made a spectacular foray into the internet in March 2006 when it bought the highly successful and market leading online auction trading site, Trade Me, for $700 million. This was part of a strategy to increase its online holdings and to associate electronic commerce with its newspapers as the online equivalent of classified advertisements, in order to capture the surging leakage of advertising to the internet (for more details see the section on the internet below)7. As Fairfax chief executive David Kirk put it: “… the economics of the business is extraordinary. There is virtually no capital required, high margins and double or triple traditional business growth…”8 Kirk sees the internet, not newspapers, as driving growth at Fairfax9. The publications amassed by INL prior to sale to Fairfax were accumulated over decades. As well as its own, it publishes magazines on contract, including Skywatch and AA Directions. Numerous titles regularly come and go amongst its magazines, mainly purchased from other companies (at least twelve between 1992 and 2003), but with a few of its own startups. For example, it bought two of the last significant provincial dailies the Nelson Evening Mail (September 1993)10, and the Marlborough Express (circulation then about 10,000) with its give-aways Saturday Express and Kaikoura Star in September 199811. In 1998 it announced a new glossy: Grace, aimed at the “independent woman”12. The May launch had a touch