MCM Sells Its Authentic Entertainment Radio & Digital Businesses To SCA

MCM Sells Its Authentic Entertainment Radio & Digital Businesses To SCA
Tony McGinn
By Tony McGinn
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MCM Entertainment Group Ltd. announced today that it had concluded a transaction with Southern Cross Austereo Ltd. where SCA acquires its Authentic Entertainment Pty. Ltd. radio production and syndication business and the Vevo premium digital video Australian representation business.

The deal includes all of Authentic Entertainment’s radio intellectual property; comprising all programme trademarks, formats and social media assets past and present as well as the assignment of all syndication agreements. It also includes the country’s most extensive audio content library spanning MCM’s 33 years of radio programme production, comedy production, concert recording, acoustic performances and artist & celebrity interviews from MCM’s operations in Australia, the UK and the US.

After five years of Authentic Entertainment developing and building the Vevo online music video brand and service in Australia on the foundations of MCM’s own music video network, SCA now takes over the Vevo partnership at a time when Vevo is the largest premium video advertiser funded offering in the country, delivering over 170M streams a month. The Vevo platform is also set to grow bigger with the recent announcement that Warner Music, the last major label that was not part of Vevo, are now joining the Vevo content offering.

A large proportion of Authentic Entertainment’s staff are transferring across to SCA to work in its growing radio syndication and digital media businesses.

On announcing the acquisition, SCA CEO Grant Blackley said, “Over the years, Authentic has built up a strong stable of assets and expertise making their businesses and staff a very attractive business opportunity for SCA.

“The Vevo contract is an exciting addition to our stable of media businesses, particularly our digital business.  We will now have unprecedented access to advertising inventory on an extremely high demand video platform, giving us the ability to offer even more effective brand solutions for our clients.

“It makes sense to take production of our shows back in-house and I welcome our new employees who are coming across from Authentic.”

MCM founder and chairman, Tony McGinn said about the deal, “We are very pleased with this outcome for our stakeholders. We are also happy that our heritage is in the hands of the largest radio enterprise in Australia.

“What a trip it has been – when I founded ‘MCM Productions’ in 1983, there was only one Austereo radio station, SAFM Adelaide. Now SCA has 76 analogue radio stations and 7 DAB stations across the country and a market leading national digital media business. SCA in several forms have been valued partners for our entire journey and I wish them every success going forward with our assets.

“We pioneered the ad funded radio syndication industry in the early 1980’s and the ad funded online music video industry in the early 2000’s in Australian media and I believe both stand as considerable and clearly lasting achievements. Along the way we also created some of the country’s most remarkable music entertainment events and series like, ‘Australian Rock n’ Roll – the best years of our lives’, ‘Rocksat’, the massive ‘Ausmusic 90’, ‘The Australian Music Awards’ (before the ARIA Awards came of age on TV), the critically acclaimed ‘Live at The Chapel’ and so many more.

“I must say to have run, sustained and grown an independent media company for more than 3 decades in the Australian media industry servicing radio, television and digital platforms has been a real accomplishment, particularly in the last challenging decade with so much structural change in media. It has been an amazing journey involving many great and passionate people. I am very proud of the tens of thousands of hours of entertainment we have created for Australian audiences and the successful national programme footprint and multitude of unique and memorable events we now leave behind”.

MCM and Authentic Entertainment are exiting their Sydney and Melbourne production and sales facilities to a small creative office in Melbourne to focus on new audio-visual content opportunities for TV and online platforms.

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