SCA has released a statement replying to an article published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on October 31st. The release was approved by Rob Murray, chair of SCA.
The original article, Southern Cross takes multi-million dollar hit from affiliate switch, was written by Zoe Samios and begins by claiming that “radio and regional television company Southern Cross Media’s revenue has taken a hit after it lost shows such as The Block and the NRL from its programming schedule at the same time the Tokyo 2020 Olympics went to air.”
Having obtained data from the Standard Media Index (SMI), the original article reports that SCA lost about $17 million lost in the first three months of the new financial year.
The SCA statement reads:
The article is misleading and contains several inaccuracies relating to SCA’s regional television affiliation switch from Nine Network to Network 10 on 1 July 2021.
The article includes some analysis of Standard Media Index (SMI) data in relation to regional television national revenues for the September 2021 quarter and suggests SCA has suffered a loss of earnings following its affiliation switch from Nine Network programming to Network 10 programming on 1 July 2021 because revenues for the September quarter are back about
$17 million year on year. Within this $17 million, the article attributes over two thirds of that decline ($11.5 million) to revenue losses by SCA in northern NSW. In fact, SCA has not owned a television licence in northern NSW since 2017.
At the time of announcing its affiliation with Network 10, SCA said it expected its television earnings to be neutral compared to the previous Nine affiliation (excluding JobKeeper and PING funding). This expectation has not changed. At SCA’s AGM on 13 October 2021, SCA’s Managing Director and CEO, Grant Blackley provided the following update: “SCA has also benefited from its exposure to regional television, which has been less affected by the lockdowns and has performed in line with our internal expectations following transition to our new affiliation with Network 10 from 1 July.
At the time of publishing, the original article also includes a clarification that reads:
An ASX statement on Monday said that Southern Cross does not have a Northern NSW TV licence. While Southern Cross does not have a licence in NSW, it was the sales representative for Nine. SMI attributes the amount earned in that period to Southern Cross. Excluding $11.5 million from Northern NSW, Southern Cross lost $5.5 million in the first three months of the new financial year.