John Singleton and Jack Cowin close in on Nine Radio buyout
Nine Radio's $275m empire has crashed to just $30m in value as billionaire John Singleton eyes a dramatic return to the network.
Have John Singleton and his billionaire buddy Jack Cowin at last put pen to paper on the Nine Radio buyout?
According to insiders a verbal agreement was reached between the two parties a fortnight ago.
This column put the claim to Singleton’s appointed representative Russell Tate, former executive chairman of Singleton’s Macquarie Media radio network and Singleton’s radio go-to man, on Thursday.
Tate said he’d signed an NDA preventing him from commenting.
Hardly a denial.
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It could be that the consortium is now conducting due diligence on Nine’s radio network which includes the top-rating 3AW and 2GB and the more poorly performing 4BC and 6PR.
According to radio insiders Singleton and a consortium including Hungry Jack’s owner Cowin have entered into an agreement to acquire the radio stations Singleton sold to Nine six years ago.
In 2019 the businessman-investor sold his remaining interest in Macquarie Media, a company then valued at $275 million, to Nine for $80 million.
Market analysts have subsequently valued Nine’s radio assets at between $25 million and $30 million, a sum that represents roughly a 90 per cent markdown.
Nine had reportedly been holding out for an offer above $50 million, however that may have changed the week of the company’s November 7 AGM after which Nine confirmed it was taking the axe to its streaming and broadcasting division which also includes radio.
The division is overseen by recently returned executive and former deal-maker Amanda Laing.
According to industry insiders, legendary adman Singleton believes he can revive the radio network’s ailing bottom line with his legendary “common touch” to ad sales.
Tate is expected to be reinstated as boss of the yet-to-be-named radio company when the deal proceeds.
The talk coincides with Singleton relisting his redundant Killcare home for $16 million.
He bought the home in October 2023 for $15.8 million during his brief relationship with seventh wife Sarah Warry who he divorced last year.
HOME SWEET HOME
Delta Goodrem and her new husband are on the hunt for a home in Sydney.
Goodrem and Matthew Copley are said to be scouring the eastern suburbs for a suitably glamorous address.
The couple was recently shown a property in oceanfront Dover Heights where cliff top mansions with north-eastern aspects are selling for upwards of $20 million.
Goodrem currently owns a two-bedroom two-bathroom apartment in College Street Darlinghurst which she purchased for $4.8 million in 2018 – the year after she and Copley started dating and she simultaneously offloaded a home in LA for $4.6 million.
High profile residents of the suburb include Kings Cross identity John Ibrahim, whose house was raided by NSW Police in 2018, and Kyle Sandilands who sometimes resides at one of Ibrahim’s investment properties across the road from the nightclub kingpin.
Ibrahim’s brother Fadi is also a longtime resident having swapped the Castle Cove house he built and was later, in 2009, gunned down, in front of his then girlfriend now wife Shayda.
Fadi was placed under house arrest for a separate matter in his Dover Heights home in 2017.
Other famous residents have included Ponzi scheme fraudster Melissa Caddick, whose Wallangra Road home was sold for $9.8 million in 2022 after Caddick disappeared.
A fortune teller, Anya Phan, and her daughter, arrested during a police raid last week for allegedly defrauding Sydney’s Vietnamese community of $70 million also live nearby.
Real Housewives of Sydney cast member Krissy Marsh also calls the suburb home.
LAW’S FUNERAL NO SHOWS
While the first few rows of broadcaster John Laws’ State Funeral were respectfully filled with politicians and official dignitaries, the likes of whom might normally attend a funeral paid for by the state, what was striking about Laws’ funeral was the list of high profile no shows.
Although Laws famously clashed with many who dared enter his orbit, there are many powerful politicians and media identities who for decades reaped the benefit of a close friendship or association with the popular radio star.
Notably absent was the man who owes much of his own radio success – and audience – to Laws; long-time rival Alan Jones.
Jones, who looks destined to spend the next nine months knocking back dinner party invitations from friends for fear they will be shamed for hosting him, has kept his head down since being charged last year with indecent assault and historic sexual touching. His hearing is scheduled to proceed next November.
Despite the stigma of the allegations, which he denies, Jones leapt onto Facebook the day after Laws’ death to recognise the enormous impact the man Jones has dubbed “the voice” had on Australian media.
“John pioneered talkback radio which, to him, was the broadcast medium where, while you talked, you also had to listen back and respond. The results bear witness to his extraordinary success,” Jones said in his generous post.
Ray Hadley, who long emulated Laws and was the older man’s understudy at 2UE for a decade (though Laws was said to have loathed him), also skipped the 80-minute service at the packed Sydney Anglican cathedral St Andrews despite having leapt onto social media with an effusive tribute.
So too did restaurateur Maurice Terzini, the founding chef of Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf restaurant Otto, in which Laws was at one time an investor.
Kyle Sandilands, whose career was not aided by Laws but who has recently referred to the older man as a “good friend”, also failed to front, telling his on-air listeners he could not face it after his own father’s funeral.
Meanwhile family matriarch Ros Packer, the widow of media boss Kerry Packer and a friend of Laws’ late wife Caroline, was expected to bring some old-fashioned glamour to proceedings but also proved a no show, perhaps due to the mobility issues that have plagued the 86-year-old in recent years.
Former prime minister Paul Keating, a one time vocal and enthusiastic fan of Laws’, did make an appearance.
Keating was a regular guest on Laws’ radio shows in the eighties and nineties during his terms as federal treasurer and prime minister.
So tight were the two men at one time, in December 1994 Laws reportedly offered the then PM the use of his Hawkesbury River retreat at Never Fail Bay for a family summer getaway.
History doesn’t relate whether Keating accepted the offer of the Berowra Waters home, a location more private than the Palm Beach mansion he’d previously borrowed from another rich-lister mate, but not long after he bought the riverfront property from Laws and wife Caroline.
One who did recognise a long and fruitful business association with Laws was hospitality group supremo John Fink, owner of Otto.
After attending the funeral Fink hosted a private wake for family and friends at his iconic Woolloomooloo restaurant.
We understand Laws’ longtime PA, Jodee Borgo, his most trusted lieutenant and loyal friend, and members of his fractured family toasted the Golden Tonsils well into the night with his favourite bourbon tipple.
RICHO FAREWELLED
A date has at last been set for the State Funeral of Graham Richardson.
The funeral of the late Labor powerbroker and federal senator will be held at 11am on Tuesday December 9 at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.
Apparently mourners should overlook the fact Richardson abandoned his catholic faith decades ago.
Earlier this month Prime Minister Anthony Albanese indicated his intention to attend.
“If I can be there, I will be there,” the PM said, describing Richardson as a “Labor legend”.
HEY, HEY LIVINIA
Livinia Nixon and Nine may have inadvertently woken a sleeping beast with a tribute package farewelling the popular weather presenter from Nine’s Melbourne news bulletin this week.
A five minute package featured not one but two grainy shots of Nixon on the program that launched her career, Hey Hey It’s Saturday.
This column hears that program’s long time anchor and onetime executive producer Daryl Somers was left bruised when Nixon failed to thank him in her sign-off.
Somers gave Nixon her start at Nine on Hey Hey.
Sources claim Somers is now taking a closer look at the vision Nine used in Nixon’s farewell package.
Had Nine approached him and been given permission the company likely would have broadcast high resolution vision and not the couple of blurry seconds it did.
In 2010 Somers’ company SEA acquired the copyright for the variety show which went to air on Nine for 28 years from 1971 to 1999.
Somers has become famously and successfully litigious in recent years.
In 2023 he sued Channel 7 for using archival footage of John Farnham singing on Hey Hey It’s Saturday without permission.
Seven denied the breach but took the footage, featured in an episode of Spotlight, offline.
Then in 2024 he took his beef with an IT contractor to the Victorian Supreme Court after the contractor locked him out of administrator access to his production company over a disputed invoice. The matter was later resolved.
This year he was before the Federal Court after a games company challenged the trademark on the game Celebrity Head, a panel game featured on Hey Hey for which Somers Enterprises has owned the trademark since 1992.
Somers won the matter after a judge upheld his appeal.
Nixon’s departure, after two decades presenting weather, coincides with Nine cutting 50 jobs nationally.
Both Nixon and Nine’s Melbourne sports presenter Tony Jones (sitting at opposite ends of a long news desk possibly to reduce the likelihood of Jones trying to plant a kiss on her as he did, to public outrage, on Rebecca Judd in 2016) laboured the line being trotted out about any motivation she may have for leaving Nine.
She is “going out … for good reason … because of your family” said Jones to Nixon who wore a pained expression and concurred.
