There was a telling moment at Friday’s CRA Conference when Rhys Holleran, Southern Cross Austereo CEO, was asked during a panel session whether the merger had been a success. Mr Holleran, of course, was adamant that it had, and said, “Don’t take my word for it, ask our people.” Then turning to the audience he asked, “Well, has it (been a success) guys?” While a chorus of voices replied in the affirmative, amid muted chuckles, one wag sitting close by suggested that he had heard them answer Mr Holleran with a collective, “Yes boss.”
The following night at the ACRAs, the omnipotence of the newly formed entity was less subtle.
Of the 82 awards handed out on the night, SCA walked away with 42 of them. The next best network, Fairfax managed to bag 11, Grant Broadcasters 6, DMG 5, ACE and Capital just 3 each with the remaining 12 ACRAs split between MRN, ARN, Supernetwork, Prime, Hot Tomato, WIN, Midwest and MCM.
The event had been sold out for a over a month, this caused many who had been regular attendees in the past to miss the event altogether.
It would be silly to suggest that when it shelled out over 700 million to purchase Austereo, Southern Cross’s dastardly plan was for total ACRA domination. Yet that seems to be one of the consequences, no matter how unintended, of them becoming so big so fast. And, to be fair, they are also very good at what they do. After all, they were considered top notch broadcasters when they were separate entities. Arguably even better as a united outfit.
Provided the ACRA judges are drawn from a broad cross section of stations and independent experts, there is no reason why SCA’s individual stations and their people should not be given a level playing field on which to compete with their peers even if the total ACRA haul for the network ends up lopsided.
The question, though, is whether the new SCA entity has changed the dynamic of the ACRAs a bit, or a lot? If so, in what way? And does it matter? If so, what could be done, or should be done about it – other than renaming the event with the unfortunate acronym, the SCARs?