In examinership with €6m debts – but McGarry says Maximum too big to fail
WITH his company stuck in a High Court examinership process, Maximum Media chief Niall McGarry believes the online publishing firm is “too big to fail” and has “too important a role” in Ireland not to successfully emerge from the insolvency procedure.
Speaking exclusively on the Irish Independent’s ‘Big Tech Show’ video podcast, Mr McGarry said it is “up for debate” whether he will be a future part of the company that publishes Joe.ie, Joe.co.uk, Her.ie and other titles.
Maximum Media is in the High Court insolvency process with cumulative debts to lenders, landlords and the Revenue of more than €6m.
The firm suffered a substantial revenue hit over a 2017 ‘click farm’ incident when an employee was found to have manipulated listenership figures on an AIB-sponsored podcast.
Addressing the incident in the podcast, Mr McGarry said while it “massively disrupted” the company‘s business, it was a standalone incident that he is still paying “a big price” for.
“It was so isolated, such a one-off and so unique to a publisher like us that I think a lot of people jumped on it and made it a much bigger story than it was,” he said.
“It gave a huge amount of traditional media organisations an opportunity to have a pop at us because we came out of nowhere.
“We didn’t come from the Dublin media set. We had created something new. We paid a big price.”
Insolvency proceedings were brought in May by the company investor Beach Point Capital, which is owed over €5m. KPMG is currently the company’s interim examiner.
“That pause in revenue massively disrupted us and our revenue last year,” Mr McGarry said of the click farm incident.
In 2017, an employee “did something because they thought it would be able to solve a problem that they had on a particular day”, he said.
“He overpromised on a KPI [key performance indicator] and realised he wasn’t going to deliver and went off and did this thing. He didn’t consult anyone and it has absolutely been a major issue for us. It was unfortunate. It was a mistake. The guy lost his job.
It still eats me up and annoys me. And it’s something that I will hold on to for quite a period of time.”
However, Mr McGarry said the controversy over the incident was “disproportionate”.
“I think that the level of blame and responsibility was disproportionate,” he said, adding he “shouldered most of it”.
“God knows how many instances in different verticals in different eras there have been of this type of thing.
“Mistakes happen in other organisations, like when someone is defamed. We’ve done that on two or three occasions where we’ve had to pay out significant sums.
“But that’s more in line with other media and it’s more accepted in the media industry that these things can happen. It’s not as big a deal.”
Mr McGarry was joined on the podcast by former RTÉ newsreader and Kinzen co-founder Mark Little, host Adrian Weckler and Ian Kehoe, co-founder of The Currency.
The podcast featured a wide-ranging discussion on the likely future of media trends in a technology age.
Joe.co.uk was responsible for some of the biggest online viral videos of the UK general election in 2019, including satirical rap ‘mash-ups’ with figures using the voices of senior politicians such as Theresa May and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
It also has a substantial online audience in Ireland through its Joe.ie and Her.ie brands, employing 50 people.
Mr McGarry said he wants to “put the incident behind us and move on”, instead focusing on “some of the amazing work we’ve done”.
“I think our organisation has been incredibly impactful on things like the Eighth Amendment referendum and on marriage equality.
“We were the first brand to get out there and get behind a Yes campaign.”
The company will also “absolutely” continue into the future, he said.
“‘Joe’ is in a process at the moment. The business is too big to fail. It plays too important a role in the Irish media scene. Whether I’ll be part of that is up for debate. It’s up for review. Who knows? I’m weighing that up myself.
“I’m 10 years in, I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I will be in this arena. I passionately believe that there are huge changes coming in terms of how media and content are monetised and I want to be at the forefront of that. Whether that’s with Joe or not, I’m not sure. We’ll see.”
However, he said the digital media landscape still has structural flaws.
“We still have systematic issues where a lot of brands are drunk on high video views, because, back in 2015 and 2016, Facebook were counting video views that weren’t real impressions at all. And then every brand manager suddenly needed 10 million views on their video. What happened was that Facebook got a big slap on the wrist [on how they counted video views]. Now they’ve got more accurate video views.”