Corporate deals, a family feud, court battles: The year in media

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If 2024 was the year of the scandal for Australia’s media companies, 2025 was the year of the deal.

Australia’s big media assets were reshaped by corporate tie-ups and overseas raiders. Plenty of cost-cutting flowed through the ranks, and there was a general an acceptance that the advertising “slump” may just be the new normal.

Mergers and deal-making

The year began with the dust still settling on one of the biggest Australian media deals in modern memory, as British streamer DAZN (said da-zone) bought out Foxtel from News Corp in a deal valuing the company at $3.4 billion. The company has cut hundreds of staffers since April, all but shuttered streaming aggregator Hubbl, its several hundred million dollar gamble, shuttered Flash and Lifestyle (its news and lifestyle streamers) and at some point in the future, probably will shutter streaming site Binge.

Nine (owner of this masthead), fresh off a scandal-laden 2024, went about its first few months relatively quietly. After an exhaustive months-long search for its CEO, it ended up appointing the executive who was already doing the job, Matt Stanton. He got about his work fairly quickly, offloading one of the company’s best moneymakers in Domain and selling its stake for $1.4 billion cash, only to then begin the process of shifting its worst moneymaker in talkback radio. The latter remains unsold. Nine also got a new chair for the second year in a row in Peter Tonagh, a former News Corp chief executive and deputy ABC chair.

Kerry Stokes is leaving the industry after a long haul; Lachlan Murdoch won the family feud over succession; ABC chair Kim Williams oversaw an action-packed year at the national broadcaster.

Seven West Media, meanwhile, will be swallowed by Southern Cross Media in the early days of the new year, barring any funny business. It’s a deal that won’t immediately change a lot for either company or for viewers. Both CEOs are hanging around, but Kerry Stokes will exit the industry after a long, long haul. His family will remain a major shareholder in the combined company, which will operate as the listed Southern Cross, but his unparalleled influence over Seven’s fortunes will probably be reduced.

Still on consolidation, there was some reprieve for the public when Nine swallowed up pretty much everything on Optus Sport in the middle of the year, namely the English Premier League.

There’s consensus that there are simply too many streaming options and too much fragmentation over where we watch sport. Optus Sport’s closure went some way to help that, though to pay for it, Stan threw an extra $5 a month on its monthly charge for the sports add-on.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s launch of HBO Max in Australia didn’t help consumers juggling multiple streaming subscriptions, but that too could soon(ish) disappear, if Netflix is successful in its deal to acquire the company.

Network 10 owner Paramount, which is also vying for Warner Bros, also got a new owner in billionaire nepo baby David Ellison this year. That deal is looking increasingly unlikely, though, thanks to Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who was part-backing it, backing out.

HBO and its hit shows such as The Last of Us could soon be owned by Netflix.

Family feud

The story with most intrigue outside the usual media watchers was the culmination of the Murdoch family feud over who would be the successor to the family empire. It had everything and more that we came to expect from the people Succession’s Roy family are based on.

Ultimately, Lachlan won. His siblings buckled under the pressure of lots of money. Lucky them!

Siobhan McKenna and husband James Flintoft arrive for the Murdoch Christmas bash this month.

One thing he did lose in 2025 was his trusted, long-term advisor Siobhan McKenna, who retired from everything Murdoch-related just one week after this masthead profiled her for Good Weekend.

It didn’t stop her from turning up and partying into the night at Lachlan’s Christmas party this month, which the prime minister didn’t show up to. Unlike last year, there was no federal election on the horizon and Rupert wasn’t going, so was it really worth it? Probably not.

Another court battle reached its conclusion, finally. That was disgraced Commando Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation battle against The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, which after a years-long slog in the courts finalised with a $13.5 million bill for his backer, Kerry Stokes. The papers also had a big win in their defamation defence against orthopaedic surgeon Munjed Al Muderis, who sued after a series of articles alleging negligent practices.

Despite Ten’s defamation win against Bruce Lehrmann, Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz were both bankrupted by Linda Reynolds, who had launched a separate defamation matter in the WA Supreme Court, while Lehrmann himself lost his appeal of the Network Ten case.

Loser of the year

Of the major media companies, ARN Media was the major loser of 2025. Most plainly because its share price is down 43 per cent across the year, far more than any other Australian media stock, and because its Kyle and Jackie O contract ($200 million for 10 years) has gone from bad to worse. Not only is it a ratings disaster in Melbourne and has attracted the ire of the regulator, but has become a revenue disaster as advertisers pull spend, forcing a total rethink of the national rollout.

Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson’s show continued to underperform.

Winner of the year

On the flipside to ARN, its commercial competitors Southern Cross and Nova could be considered the winners. Both were major beneficiaries of ARN’s cratering advertising share, the Kyle and Jackie O story sucked attention away from the performance of their own stars’ performance, Southern Cross landed its merger deal two years after ARN tried to break it up, and its share price was up 27 per cent for the year at time of writing.

Another winner was also commercial media, which has thus far avoided regulation on selling advertising space to gambling firms. The government brought in its streaming quotas legislation around 18 months later than it was expected, and new comms minister Anika Wells helped push through reforms at breakneck speed with the kids social media ban, backed by advocacy group 36 Months and News Corp. The speed at which this was enshrined in law makes inaction on gambling even more glaring.

Broadcast fight

There’s a sense the lack of clarity over this policy may be holding up the NRL’s broadcast rights process. With gambling ads forming such a significant portion of sports broadcasting revenue, and no clarity over how any potential policy might impact each potential bidders, there is likely to be hesitation before committing to a multibillion-dollar contract.

The NRL may have missed its moment to secure its next contract at the peak of the market, having already taken a cut deal last time around.

Newsroom moves

The Herald will have a new editor – Jordan Baker – in 2026, The Guardian weathered its own political storm in the capital, and there were surprisingly no major News Corp changes but for company loyalist Nick Papps getting the big job at the California Post. Laura Tingle moved on from 7.30 at the ABC, the broadcaster also finally putting Q+A out of its misery, as did Network 10 with The Project.

ABC managing director Hugh Marks speaking at the National Press Club.

The ABC will have $50 million extra to play with thanks to a government deal with the Greens, which gives Hugh Marks extra hopes of creating another Bluey. Speaking of weathering crises, Marks has made it through his first nine months as ABC boss mostly unscathed.

The hugely embarrassing Antoinette Lattouf legal saga (which cost the ABC $2.6 million) is largely a stain on his predecessors. He cleverly seized on a Media Watch story about Kim Williams′ alleged interference early, putting to bed any questions of how the pair would work together. And as the year came to a close, he batted off Sky News and The Australian’s attempts to conflate the BBC/Trump crisis, two Senate estimates bashings, and he even came away with a very friendly interview with the News Corp broadsheet. Result?

Antoinette Lattouf arrives at the Federal Court in Sydney in September.

There’s always hurdles, of course, and there’s still a pay dispute set to roll into the new year which could prompt staff to walk off the job. There’s one of those at SBS, too, though the lack of a permanent SBS chair and managing director makes that one even more of a head-scratcher.

What more will Australia’s shrinking media class bring us in 2026?