WIN owner says PBL won’t run NBN well

20Aug07

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a very interesting article on Bruce Gordon of WIN Television on Saturday 18 August. Following are excerpts:

Bruce almighty

He’s smooth, savvy and supremely confident. Bruce Gordon tells Lisa Murray how he would rule the world of free-to-air television in Australia.

….there is one piece of memorabilia ….that has taken on particular significance in recent weeks. It is a letter dated February 28, 1958 – a job offer from Gordon’s mate Rupert Murdoch.

The offer of $2000 a year to run Murdoch’s newly acquired television station in Adelaide was turned down.

"I didn’t want to live in Adelaide, for a start, and I knew nothing about television at the time," Gordon says.

But the 78-year-old is living proof that if you stay in an industry long enough what goes around, comes around. WIN now owns the station – Channel Nine in Adelaide – after settling its $105 million purchase three weeks ago.

It also picked up Channel Nine in Perth this year.

And if PBL Media doesn’t resurrect the fortunes of the Nine Network, which owns Nine in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Newcastle, another piece of memorabilia on WIN’s boardroom wall might take on extra meaning: a 1991 newspaper article with the heading "WIN TV may buy Packer network".

"I’ll tell you something – if they don’t pull Channel Nine into place, it will be on its knees in another 12 months. We might try and buy them. That little story in there might just come true," he says, pointing to the boardroom.

The owner and deputy chairman of WIN – his son Andrew is the chairman – is busy bedding down the recent acquisitions in Perth and Adelaide, contemplating a float of the business, fighting off a hike in affiliation fees from PBL Media and meeting the demands of a 16-year-old daughter in need of some driving lessons.

Far from being overwhelmed by the workload, Gordon seems to relish it, especially the battle with PBL Media.

Over the past week, WIN kick-started its negotiations with PBL Media on a new affiliation agreement. PBL Media wants WIN to pay as much as 40 per cent of its revenue in return for programming, up from the 32 per cent it pays under the present agreement, which officially expired on July 1.

Gordon wants the fees reduced, on the back of poor ratings and in line with the 29 per cent of revenue that WIN’s major regional competitors, Prime and Southern Cross Broadcasting, pay their partners at Seven and Ten.

He’s threatening to dump the affiliation agreement and source WIN’s own programs if he doesn’t get what he wants.

"We had historically always paid Kerry [Packer] a little bit more because Kerry won the ratings," Gordon says, lounging back in his chair, oozing the confidence of a man who has almost 50 years’ experience in the industry.

"That’s not the case any more. They want a big figure across every market. We can’t deliver them that figure and we’ve told them that. In the meantime, they’ve done some of the most ridiculous things in the world," he says, referring to some of Nine’s recent programming decisions.

"Over 10 years, our affiliation fees for the group could get up to $1.7 billion for programming which is failing in the market place," he says.

Gordon reckons WIN has the upper hand in the negotiations after adding the Adelaide and Perth stations to its stable, and says PBL Media made a mistake by not "fighting hard enough" to get them.

"I don’t know a network in any country in the world that covers as big an area as we do."

In the wake of the recent changes to Australian media ownership rules, Gordon has emerged as a real player.

As one of the biggest shareholders in Ten, he was closely involved with that network’s ultimately doomed sale process earlier this year.

He bought Nine in Perth and Adelaide and was an underbidder for the Nine affiliate in Newcastle, the high-rating NBN.

…….In a 1998 interview Gordon said the reason he was the largest shareholder in PBL was because he had faith in its future. "The moves they have made in TV have been brilliant," the former PBL director said.

Almost 10 years on, Gordon’s tune has changed. He is scathing about the management and recent ratings performance of the Nine Network.

He says it is not surprising that James Packer sold 75 per cent of the network to the private equity firm CVC Capital Partners, and he concedes he has drifted away from the Packer family.

"How long do you think it takes for someone to come into the industry and learn television? The Nine Network is now in the hands of people who have just come into the industry," he says, referring to PBL Media’s chief executive, Ian Law, and Nine’s executive director, Jeffrey Browne.

He is particularly critical of recent programming decisions, including the ill-fated chat show The Catch-Up, which WIN refused to run despite its affiliation agreement, the scrapping of The Young and the Restless, the airing of the late-night show Quizmania and the "re-runs of CSI ad nauseam".

PBL Media won’t do a good job of running NBN, the Nine affiliate in Newcastle, Gordon says. "How are they going to run Newcastle? It’s a regional station. These are big city boys. Capital city boys that are used to running big operations. Why do you think Darwin is such a mess? It’s a regional station and they’ve run that into the ground."

Would he buy Darwin? Sure, if PBL Media approached him, but don’t expect Gordon to go knocking on PBL’s door.

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