I’ve come to the conclusion that the Australian Financial Review is a bit under appreciated. For many it is drier than a sea biscuit, even if it is avidly consumed, because it offers insights and news from which we might profit. Philistines think this is its best feature, of course.
I reckon it’s brilliantly entertaining though. Every Friday, Pierpont lights up a cigar and fillets a slippery stock market over promiser. His favourite targets are suspect capital raisers, who start mining companies with $2.00 and then spend more on their prospectus than they do on bulldozers. Witnessing Pierpont take down shady spruikers is a heart warming thing. It’s almost more fun than watching Steve Vizard apologise.
Friday’s Fin also has Australia’s most engaging lift out. The Review section offers a dozen or so riveting essays on global affairs, art, history, science and esoteric brainiacs who have contributed to our world. Philistines use this section to wrap their garbage.
Monday’s Fin has several attractions for those in media and marketing. One attraction is the odd relevant job advertisement. Another is juicy news about senior marketing movements, usually out the door. And then there are stories about new marketing, media launches and trends.
Wednesday’s Fin holds no particular attraction for me because there is nothing puerile in it. However, I was richly entertained by last Wednesday’s report about a gaggle of American fund managers.
It may be me, but editorial content concerning mutual funds usually does something odd to my eyes. It shuts them. Within five seconds I tend to find myself thinking about something else, indeed anything else. However, this piece really drew me in.
Apparently those mutual fund managers are real funsters after all. According to the Fin, the US Securities and Stock Exchange Commission is considering taking civil action against a big fund manager called Fidelity over the matter of certain “gifts” that have come the way of its employees.
It’s alleged that a bunch of young fund managers from Fidelity were uplifted from Boston on a private jet and flown to Miami for a buck’s party. Life’s a bitch.
They might have gotten away with it had the plane not touched down in New York on the way south to pick up some women, some of whom, investigators suspect, were paid for their attendance.
This salacious proposition made entertaining reading to me, but conservative America is probably more appalled by reports of a mile-high orgy than the issue of probity. But hey, we’re talking about America.
Michael Gill may be behind this transformation of the Fin into a more balanced proposition. He’s a hell of an entertaining guy, recognised as the only publisher to ever draw an argument about readership with Gary Morgan. A draw is a win in that game.
The Fin does its briskest trade in the hard tack of business reporting. It loves reporting on the media, possibly because it is the media.
The same week I was revising my opinion of fund managers, the Fin reported that Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, has once again been seen hanging about with various über-bosses in the media while not de-regulating the media. De-regulating the media has been promised by the government before each of the past three elections. Nevertheless, a spokesperson for Senator Coonan said she was “continuing to finalise the framework”.
I’m thinking of running a book on whether Sydney will get a second airport before we get a deregulated media.
Apparently one of Senator Coonan’s proposals is to hawk some un-used broadcast spectrum to those powerful new handhelds that are beginning to populate our pockets. Each block of spectrum can carry up to 20 channels to two-thirds of the population.
Streaming advertising content to two thirds of everyone onto their personal little digital doohickie and then getting a response is every marketing director’s dream.
You can expect the usual media investor suspects to be drooling over that spectrum. But the Fin reports that Senator Coonan is “understood to favour assigning the spectrum to new entrants”.
I don’t know about you, but if I owned a TV network and thought I wasn’t going to be a part of that action, I’d be having a terminal sphincter moment.
The other idea Senator Coonan has been pitching to the media owners is to all hunker down together at the equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard and kick around a few ideas. It seems that she has flown this kite past Fairfax, News, PBL, Ten, Seven and Foxtel.
For reasons unknown there is little evidence that this idea has been warmly embraced. It could be because most of them expect to be in court defending themselves against the Seven Network in a legal contest that promises to further brighten the days of bizoids and the weekends of lawyers.
But if Senator Coonan did get them all into one room, there is only one certain outcome. Bet on the second airport.
Peter Miller is the managing director of Adstream. E: fittoprint@bandt.com.au
