Seven signs news deals with Google, Facebook
Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media has signed deals with Google and Facebook that will see both tech giants paying the network for its news content.
Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media has signed deals with Google and Facebook that will see both tech giants paying the network for its news content.
The broadcaster and publisher has agreed to provide content to Google’s News Showcase for five years and to social media heavyweight Facebook for three years.
All parties have been tight-lipped about the price tag, but the Google deal is understood to be worth considerably more than the $30m reported by some media outlets in February, when letters of intent were signed.
SWM anticipated revenue from the agreements would begin arriving before the end of the financial year and the majority next year, with “minimal incremental costs” required to deliver the extra cash.
Seven chief executive James Warburton said the two agreements “underpin our sustainability and enable us to continue to build our digital platform”.
“The transformation of SWM continues,” he said.
“Finalisation of the Google and Facebook agreements completes one of the key objectives outlined in our February results, delivering further digital transformation and realising the true value of our news and current affairs product on third-party digital platforms.”
The deals will help the company manage its worrying debt, forecast to be between $270m and $280m by the end of this financial year.
A number of media organisations have already signed deals with Google and Facebook following the introduction of the news media bargaining code, which allows the federal government to intervene if the parties can’t reach agreement.
The code is designed to ensure media companies are compensated for the use of their content on search engines and social media platforms, and seeks to address the market bargaining imbalance between the digital giants and news publishers.
The February agreements came after Google threatened to shut its search engine locally and Facebook dramatically blocked Australian users from sharing or viewing news content on its platform, a protest — or warning shot — that also left hundreds of other businesses, sporting bodies and charities without their Facebook pages for several days.
Seven’s TV rival Nine Entertainment, which publishes the former Fairfax newspapers, has also inked deals with Google and Facebook, as has News Corp, which publishes The Australian.
Late last year, Google said it would pay publishers more than $US1bn ($1.3bn) over three years to license content for News Showcase, which displays story panels, images and summaries of news content. It was initially launched in Germany and Brazil.
SWM shares closed down 3.16 per cent at 46c on Monday.
Tight NRL finale draws strong TV audience
The ratings for the closely-fought match between the Panthers and the Melbourne Storm were up on last year’s NRL centrepiece but were easily outstripped by the TV audience for the lopsided AFL Grand Final a week earlier.
ABC ombudsman changes ‘sympathetic’ Hezbollah stories
The taxpayer-funded broadcaster’s watchdog received more than a dozen complaints about an article that readers claimed was ‘too sympathetic to Hezbollah’.