You can't call them complacent: Prime Media has deal fever. Sure, everyone's talking to everyone and all that, but the regional broadcaster's chairman John Hartigan and his harried chief executive Ian Audsley have in recent weeks briefed their shareholders on specific plans to transact themselves out of oblivion's path.

Veteran UBS adviser Robert Mactier has been (thanklessly) carrying Big Harto's pitch up and down the street. The Prime bumpkins are touting a reverse-takeover of their metropolitan content wellspring – marginally ambitious given their respective sizes. Seven West's market capitalisation is $1.23 billion to Prime's $164 million so Big Harto could only buy Kerry Stokes' free-to-air market leader with John Singleton's favourite currency: lemonade stand IOUs. Perhaps the ludicrously expansive scheme is just a way of getting the Stokes clan to the table?