What an excellent article in the Saturday Telegraph about Nine Entertainment’s quinella of quandaries, detailing its ambitious amalgamation in 2018 to form a $4.2b behemoth, but then collapsing from within with further challenges on its horizon (“I saw the rot at the heart of Nine” ST, 4/7). While Karl Stefanovic now has a larger audience on his podcast than the Today Show, one must question how carefully the implications of his departure were examined. Offloading Domain for $2.4b, (its major cash-cow) and the fire sale at Macquarie Radio superimposed on management turbulence, the slippery-dip share price is proving remarkably resistant. When Kerry Packer sold PBL to Alan Bond in the 1980s for $lb, only to repurchase it a few years later for 25 per cent, he must have considered himself the cat with nine lives. Nine Entertainment has needed an autocrat like Packer, personally invested, knowing the media industry and prepared to sack bloated bureaucracy. Failing to do so, the company has made a rod for its own back, or, more correctly, a cat of nine tails. One might reflect on what Kerry Packer would make of his beloved Channel 9 and its woke bosses, but I suspect his language would be unpublishable in The Daily Telegraph. Alan Sexton, North Parramatta 6July2026
