There are few years that have reshaped Australia’s media like the last 12 months. Australia’s two largest media companies have been involved in mega-merges, Foxtel has a new owner and digital publishers struggle under the weight of tech titans redefining search and AI. Here are the media owners to watch for 2026.
Seven West Media & SCA
In January, Seven West Media and Southern Cross Austereo merged, creating a new media juggernaut with TV and radio coverage that reaches more parts of Australia than its peers.
This provides Seven with a powerful broadcast ally in Southern Cross, bringing together the Seven Network and its affiliate digital stations with SCA’s Hit and Triple M radio networks, as well as its podcasting platform LiSTNR. Seven West also dominates the West Australian print media market.
There are certainly synergies between the pair. Seven now offers a more compelling cross-media proposition for advertisers in broadcast, particularly when it comes to covering large scale sports events, and can cross promote its tent pole TV shows and events to a larger audience.
The merger certainly provides both parties with added scale, but its success will depend on how well it brings everything together, particularly its sales operation and the tech that underpins it.
Both legacy TV and radio have found growth challenging in recent years, how they work as a team to maximise the opportunity, especially in the transition to digital media consumption, rather than operate in silos will be critical.
Nine & QMS
Seven’s biggest rival Nine has taken a different path. Many industry observers believe its $850 million acquisition of QMS represents a shrewd piece of business with one industry leader questioning why Nine didn’t look for an outdoor acquisition sooner.
Of all legacy media, out-of-home has been in the best shape for several years with years of growth post-Covid, partly due to the transition to digital screens, its sharpening of tech and more sophisticated measurement, and the simple fact that it is the one medium younger audiences cannot choose to switch off.
QMS has expanded its network of digital screens rapidly in recent times with contract wins to provide outdoor advertising for the Transport for NSW and City of Sydney. It now has a network that covers most metropolitan areas of Australia and with the capability to run video content.
This suits Nine and is a neat fit for advertisers looking to dominate screens at home and on the move.
Both are also official partners of the Olympic and Paralympic games, which would provide Nine with the ability to run advertising and content across QMS, and vice versa, during these high-profile events.
For QMS, Nine provides a rich source of first party data that will allow advertisers the ability to target and segment audiences with greater granularity and sophistication across its digital screens network.
Nine offloading its radio assets, which have proven more difficult to commercialise, is hardly a surprise, and it is questionable how much political clout talk back radio provides in the modern age.
This TV, streaming, out-of-home and publishing conglomerate is certainly one to watch.
Foxtel & DAZN
DAZN’s $3.4 billion acquisition of Foxtel has placed an iconic Aussie TV and streaming business into foreign hands, but so far the signs have been positive.
Foxtel continues to operate Australia’s premier sports streamer, covering both footy codes and a record breaking summer of cricket. What happens next will be interesting.
Will DAZN pump more money into Australian sports rights and provide it with even greater tech to bring events to life?
Nine and Foxtel currently share the NRL’s $2 billion broadcasting rights, which are due to expire in 2027. So will Foxtel look to acquire the NRL rights whole and find a way to circumvent Australia’s anti-siphoning rules?
AFL, which is worth more than $4 billion have a cycle that ends in 2031, so all eyes will be on whether DAN has the appetite to really disrupt Australia’s sports media landscape.
It will also be interesting to see whether DAZN and Foxtel eye other properties, such as the Premier League once Stan’s current deal expires.
The other question is Foxtel’s longer term plans for Binge, the entertainment streamer. DAZN is focused on sport elsewhere in the world; will it look to continue bankrolling Binge at a time when Hollywood production houses are already saturating the Australian market and in-housing licensing arrangements?
ARN
This is the first full year under ARN’s new boss (and Nine’s former sales leader) Michael Stephenson, who has certainly stamped his mark on the business in a short period of time.
Nine veterans Kerri Elstub has been brought in as chief content office, and Richard Hunwick promoted to chief sales officer., while SCA veteran Dave Cameron recently joined as director of content for ARN’s metro radio stations. Another of Stepho’s former Nine colleagues, Ben Campbell, has been promoted to lead digital and tech.
Stepho is not only reshaping the ARN leadership team, he is setting the business on a new trajectory. Its network of radio stations have been streamlined and consolidated under the KIIS and GOLD super brands, Kyle & Jackie O have expanded into Perth, there is a heavier focus on podcasts and iHeart Originals, more live events, and a reframing of the business away from audio and more towards entertainment.
In theory, this provides brands with more touchpoints and greater reach, but how it comes together in terms of tech and data is the question.
ARN’s ability to simplify the sales operation and provide richer data for targeting and measurement will be key.
It’s not a challenge that Stepho is unfamiliar with; Nine spent years transitioning to digital media. With radio’s first ever upfront, Stepho has planted a stake in the ground, now he has to deliver on that vision.
oOh!Media
As QMS joins the good folk at Nine, out-of-home’s largest player, oOh!Media is going through a transition phase of its own. Cathy O’Connor, who took the reins from long-serving founder and CEO Brendon Cook, had done a sterling job transitioning and growing the business through Covid. and then a golden age for outdoor (albeit a less than pr 2024).
She has now passed the baton onto James Taylor, the former SBS leader, who joins at a time when the outdoor market’s growth has been sluggish at best.
Nonetheless, Taylor inherits a business in great shape, recently winning a long-term Transport for NSW contract and making solid traction in the burgeoning retail media sector with reo.
The addition of QMS to the well resourced Nine should shake up the outdoor sector, and all eyes will focus on how rivals, including oOh!Media, respond.
Vinyl Group
A few weeks ago, Vinyl Group revealed it had become ‘cash flow positive’ in the fourth quarter of 2025, posting a record quarter and an air of optimism around a business that has been on struggle street for some time.
As pointed out by Mumbrella, this is a reframing of a previous ambition where CEO Josh Simons talked up ambitions of an EBITDA-positive (profit) Q2 this year.
It’s fair to say that Vinyl had a challenging 2025, marked regular rounds of redundancies to leaders at mastheads, including Mediaweek, and a messy court case with former Brag boss Luke Girgis.
Vinyl Media, the publishing side of the group, has acquired several interesting titles including Concrete Playground, Refinery29 and Mediaweek recently, but the jury is still out about plans to monetise Simons’ vision.
Cutting costs (headcount) may be a necessary step to get the business on solid financial footing after an M&A, but when a series of highly capable senior leaders move on in a relatively short space of time, questions follow.
Digital publishers reliant on search
When Google sneezes, the digital publishing world catches a cold, but in some cases this may turn into pneumonia.
Google’s algorithm changes have caused traffic chaos for digital publishers, especially smaller indy mastheads that rely on search, with drops of 20-30 per cent widely reported.
The fact is, search traffic for a lot of titles has waned, not just because of Google’s search algorithm tweaks in the past year, but also because of the threat of GenAI answering machines.
Google’s Gemini (and overviews), OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Meta’s Llama are rapidly redefining how people find information and consume news. Although these LLMs source publishers, few click on it, and how they determine which sources to reference is cause for concern.
The writing is on the wall for digital native publishers that rely on search engines for audiences, rather than using newsletters and other direct distribution channels.
As the GenAI gatekeepers redefine how people consume media, the next few years could see a swath of titles fall by the wayside. The losers, aside from publishers, will be consumers of rich, diverse and credible information.
