Merger gives Prime Media chance to thrive

Prime Media chairman John Hartigan has mixed emotions as he reflects on the sale of Prime television to Seven West Media.

Prime chairman John Hartigan. Picture: Jane Dempster

Prime Media chairman John Hartigan has mixed emotions as he reflects from his Hunter Valley home on the “game-changer” deal that has taken over his previous 12 hours.

He believes the offer from Seven West Media to buy his business is right, but it’s the end of an era for an organisation which was known for making all staff feel as though they were part of a family.

“There’s no question that what’s occurred … is right,” Hartigan tells The Australian.

“This is a no-brainer from my point of view in terms of what is best for the shareholders.”

Hartigan, former chairman and chief executive of News Corp Australia, and his board have supported an offer by Seven West Media to buy Prime, which, should it be approved by shareholders and regulators, will mark the end to a broadcaster with a rich history in regional Australia.

“Even with the right call, there’s always a degree of sadness,” he says.

“I must say it’ll continue and there’s the certainty now about it continuing where arguably there wasn’t in the form that we are used to. We’ve been pretty much in a regulatory straitjacket because of the inability of any of the regionals to break out of their territories. We’ve seen streaming coming over the top of us, which is totally unregulated, we’ve seen shifts to all forms of digital media and again, free from all the regulation that we have.”

However Hartigan, who has chaired Prime Media since 2014, believes there is something unique about regional broadcasters and Prime, in particular.

The business which was led by Paul Ramsay for 30 years until 2014, has a lot of “goodwill”, Hartigan says.

“Most people recognise Paul Ramsay’s involvement. He bought in to Prime just before ­aggregation, when he realised that aggregation was about to occur and he ran the business like a family company, and there’s so much goodwill within the staffing,” he says.

It is too early to tell whether the Prime brand name will disappear from Australian screens, but Hartigan hopes the brand’s cartoon figure, Prime Possum, will survive the merger and not be ­“euthanised”.

“I can recall a couple of generations of Australians have gone to bed as children to the tune of Prime Possum,” he says.

“Prime Possum used to come on all the screens at 7.30pm and tell the kids to hop off to bed and invariably they took that direction so much so that many parents used to tape it and put it on earlier, thinking that kids would not recognise it at 6 o’clock instead of 7.30, so that they had to oblige everything that Prime Possum did. It’s just a small part of what’s been an amazing organisation.

“That’s the nature of country Australia. It’s a very different environment to grow up in and very small things like that that leave an indelible mark on your upbringing.”

But Hartigan, who grew up in regional Australia, says that although Prime’s audiences valued the business, it didn’t ensure its ­future. Prime’s full-year financial results reported a revenue fall of 4.7 per cent to $191.8m. He is not confident Prime would have survived without Friday’s deal.

“We were on the record at the annual general meeting and at other times pointing out that we’re operating in a very challenging environment and our shareholders are very familiar with that and that’s why this is an opportunity to draw a line in the sand and look at the upside of being part of a scaled organisation.”

Hartigan will have fond memories of his time with Prime, but he says the best part of all of it has been the “directness” of those in regional Australia.

“I’ve often said that if politicians learn how to speak like people in the bush, and I don’t mean slang, I just mean simplicity of ­delivering a message. To my mind, it’s the uniqueness that, yes, there’s a drought, yes, people are angry and rightfully so, but people just get on with it. You don’t get the hand-wringing.”