Nine battered by storm of its own making

Nine Entertainment chairman Peter Costello, left, and chief executive Mike Sneesby. Picture: James Brickwood.

The crisis currently engulfing Nine is a disaster of the media company’s own making. And there is no quick fix.

In many ways, whether the board or senior management were aware of the extent of the alleged behavioural improprieties of longserving news boss Darren Wick towards female staff is not the main issue, as scandalous as it will be if it emerges there was a cover-up culture at the highest levels of the network.

But the immediate priority for Nine is surviving the firestorm that could rip a fresh hole in its ­already anaemic advertising revenue stream, and alienate a massive chunk of its audience.

How many brands will now want to be associated with Nine?

How can a company sell itself as one of Australia’s biggest and most powerful media players if its name is synonymous with mistreatment of female staff?

And how can Nine overturn a blokey culture that has persisted for decades?

As one ex-Nine journalist told The Australian last week, the network has always loved to push the mirage of the “Nine family”.

“But the truth is you have to play by a fairly strict set of rules at Nine, at least in the TV world,” the female insider said.

“And the blokes are still all-powerful.”

Former Channel 9 news chief Darren Wick pictured in 2021. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Damian Shaw.

Wick ran the news and current affairs TV division for 13 years, and he did it his way.

Insiders say he seemed to revel in the fact that he could make or break the careers of young female journalists, and could be unbelievably cruel to those who fell out of favour.

“It was a horrible, unhealthy place to work, but as terrible as it is to admit it, everyone accepted that the only way to succeed was to be on the good side of men like Wickie,” one insider said.

That culture was born and flourished in the Packer years, across the 1980s and 1990s. But while the rest of the world evolved, time stood still in some pockets of Nine, especially TV.

Like all media companies, Nine is in the grip of a prolonged downturn in advertising revenue.

It’s been bad since the end of the pandemic, and it’s taking longer to bounce back than economists predicted.

And for Nine, the problem is more pressing, given that the Paris Olympics is just two months away. The company last year paid $305m in cash for the summer and winter Games through to Brisbane 2032, and Nine desperately needs to secure generous ad deals to justify the investment.

What can chair Peter Costello and CEO Mike Sneesby do to turn things around?

Nine Entertainment’s net profit crashed by 40 per cent in the six months to December 31 – a shocking result that needs to be turned around as quickly as possible.

Add an entrenched toxic culture into the mix, and the problem is laid bare: Nine has been too slow to rehabilitate an outdated culture, and that failure has hit the company at the worst possible time for its sickly balance sheet.