Seven West Media’s full-year profits plummeted 69% to $45m in what the chief executive, Jeff Howard, conceded was “a tough year” for the conglomerate.
Reflecting a decline in advertising revenue across the media industry, Seven’s group revenue dipped 5% to $1.4bn on the previous full year as net debt climbed to $301m.
“The continued weak economic environment contributed to an 8.2% decline in the total TV advertising market on FY23,” Howard said. “SWM was able to partially offset this decline by increasing our revenue share of the total TV market to 40.2%.”
Billionaire Kerry Stokes’ media empire, which operates the Seven Network and a suite of West Australian newspapers, this week faced more scrutiny over its culture when ABC’s Four Corners alleged bullying and misogyny was rife in Seven’s TV business.
In response to the Four Corners report, Seven said it was “clearly concerned about allegations of poor behaviour and any mistreatment of employees” but some of the cases were historical and had been dealt with.
The ABC investigation followed allegations made during a defamation trial that the network reimbursed an interviewee, Bruce Lehrmann, for money spent on cocaine and sex workers. Seven has denied the claims.
Howard, who took over from James Warburton in April, acknowledged the allegations but said individuals who had displayed unacceptable behaviour had been removed.
“I want to be really clear that the actions of some individuals do not reflect the values, behaviour and attitude of the business as a whole, which is home to some of the best, hardest working and most passionate media professionals in Australia,” Howard told investors on a results call on Wednesday.
“As I’ve said in a number of forums, a number of people who have displayed behaviour that doesn’t reflect SWM’s values have already been removed from the company.
“As part of the changes we made we are focused on building a stronger, high performance based culture that enables our great people to thrive, and where unacceptable behaviour is not tolerated.”
In June, the company was restructured into three divisions: television, digital and the West, and more than 100 redundancies were handed out across the company.
“Our new operating model establishes clear accountability for driving our own financial destiny,” Howard said.
Seven has grown its linear TV audience by 0.5% and its catchup TV audience by 39%, only partly offsetting a decline of 6% in TV revenue.
The commercial free-to-air TV sector said this week that Nine, Seven and Ten made combined advertising revenue of $3.3bn for the financial year, down 8.1% on last financial year, or a $250m shortfall.
Seven said the launch this year of The Nightly, a national digital newspaper, website and app, had been successful and now had a unique monthly audience of 2.3m.
The Nightly is the latest addition to Stokes’ media empire, which includes the West Australian, the Sunday Times, 19 regional publications, 11 suburban newspapers and free news website PerthNow.
The West Australian newspaper’s advertising revenue was flat year-on-year and circulation revenue declined 3.0%.
