Splitting HairsThe fall of the Independent |
SA media assets could be up for grabs.
This may well turn out to be a week of consequence for the South African media as this Friday, July 24, Independent News & Media, the Irish company that owns a swathe of South African newspapers, might have to announce bankruptcy.
As required by Irish insolvency law, Deloitte is on standby as the administrator in the event that the firm fails to refinance a €200-million bond by Friday and it looks unlikely that the company's founder and biggest shareholder, Anthony O'Reilly, will pull the rabbit out of the hat as he failed to do so for the first deadline a month ago.
A selling off of assets is inevitable and in South Africa the company's outdoor advertising business is already on the market, according to a Reuters report late last week. The names of media companies such as Caxton, Avusa and Media24 are being touted around as interested buyers of the Independent's local assets that include newspapers such as The Star, Cape Times, Pretoria News and The Mercury - as is the name of individuals such as Moeletsi Mbeki, the brother of Thabo Mbeki, and Western Cape businessman Barend Hendricks.
Independent Newspapers South Africa denied last week that any of the South African newspapers were for sale but the mere thought of the Irish leaving our shores has got hacks across the land shivering in anticipation and please forgive us if we take to the streets like grateful Munchkins, singing: "Ding-dong the witch is dead".
Sure, if some of the Independent's newspapers change hands, it will mean unsettling times and job losses. Cross-title operations such as IOL and Business Report, for instance, may not survive but it will only do the media in this country a world of good.
I have never worked for the Independent group but know enough of their dejected hacks to say: "So long, Tony, and thanks for nothing."
The Irish's tenure here has seen many fine papers become a shadow of themselves as cost-cutting has decimated news rooms' numbers and morale.
Look no further than the Independent's KwaZulu-Natal broadsheets - The Mercury, Daily News and Sunday Tribune - for the most dramatic examples of this deplorable trend. These days, frankly, the Sunday Tribune is rubbish and The Mercury and Daily News are so thin and dull that when I lived in Durban in 2004, I coughed up for a subscription from The Witness to be delivered to my door all the way from Pietermaritzburg - as I'm sure did many Durbanites. That lively little paper was bought by Media24 a few years back.
Independent hacks have told many a woeful tale in the pub over the past 15 years: The news room with only one terminal with an Internet connection. Boerewors rolls in the parking basement for the Christmas party. Waves of retrenchments. Whole divisions kept on contract with no benefits for years.
Excuse me while I hang a string of garlic around my neck to ward off the evil.
I think the government will secretly be glad to see the back of O'Reilly too as what does the former Heinz CEO and chairman care for transformation in this corner of a media empire that stretches to India, Australia and New Zealand?
For years, the story on the grapevine was that the Irish were really after the lucrative Argus group's pension fund but I suspect O'Reilly fancied the prestige of being able to hang with Nelson Mandela at swanky functions and have his newspapers cover them. And there's nothing like being able to hide behind a framed picture of you and Madiba when Denis O'Brien, O'Reilly's nemesis and the company's second biggest shareholder, blusters into your office.
Of course, being a newspaper baron isn't what it used to be and you really need substantial TV assets to buy the kind of influence that Silvio Belusconi and Rupert Murdoch wield. These days, the advertising pie is so fractured that you really need to know the business if you're a wannabe media mogul.
It is unlikely that the Independent's South African operation will be snapped up in its entirety as it will come with a hefty price tag and the Competition Commission wouldn't approve an existing South African media company buying the whole shebang.
Personally, I think it would be foolish to buy an afternoon broadsheet such as the Cape Argus or the Daily News. Afternoon papers have had their day unless you're a tabloid selling in the trains and taxis.
With Media24's aggressive expansion of the Daily Sun at the lower-income end of the market, there's really only room for one daily broadsheet in the Cape Town and Durban. And there is so much to fix at the Sunday Tribune, it's not worth the trouble or the cost.
Not only would a sell off of Independent papers be good for journalists and readers, it'll show us which of the media players know their replates from their dinner plates.
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