Nine stung with $7m in extra legal fees as 60 Minute saga takes its toll

Nine has racked up an additional $7m in legal fees, with the 60 Minutes Beirut saga adding to its woes.

Lebanese policemen hold Australian TV presenter Tara Brown while escorting her from a Lebanese courthouse to Baabda Prison for women on April 18, 2016. (AFP PHOTO/MARWAN TAHTAH)

The Nine Network was stung by an extra $7 million in legal costs last financial year, as it secured the release of a 60 Minutes crew detained in Lebanon, and fought court battles with Bruce Gordon’s WIN Corporation and Kerry Stokes’ Seven Network.

Nine (NEC) revealed the legal costs in its fiscal year 2016 accounts today but declined to say how much of the $7m could be attributed to the 60 Minutes child snatching disaster, which saw reporter Tara Brown and her crew spend two weeks in a Beirut jail.

The company is also engaged in mediation with former producer Stephen Rice who was the lone casualty of the 60 Minutes incident.

Nine was sued by its former regional affiliate partner, WIN, earlier this year after the metro free-to-air network started streaming its content live via the internet into regions where the two companies had a program supply agreement.

Supreme court judge Hammerschlag threw out the case but WIN launched an appeal and the matter is ongoing.

Seven sued Nine in a matter relating to its former reality cooking program Hotplate last August. Seven believed the show had copied key attributes of its flagship franchise My Kitchen Rules.

The parties reached a settlement in the Federal Court whereby Nine agreed not to produce another Hotplate series, nor to ever rebroadcast or distribute the first series.

The news came as Nine unveiled a $120.3m net profit, which was down by 7.1 per cent compared to last year.

The network’s revenue dropped by 6.5 per cent to $1.28 billion, as it grappled with ratings failures Reno Rumble and Australia’s Got Talent, and a sluggish free-to-air advertising market.