Nigel Douglas, managing director of Mediacom

Who do you think is in a better position now that Sky and Vodafone haven’t merged?

What you’re seeing is audiences and thus revenue fragmenting and shifting with the digital revolution. The media companies need to evolve their businesses with the market. It’s a travesty that the recent mergers were declined by the Commerce Commission and hypocritical that they approved Bauer’s (APN’S magazine titles were purchased by Bauer in 2014).

All of the media companies could benefit from mergers, but the ones that are losing audience are print and TV. NZME and Fairfax could create efficiencies for their declining newspapers and regional synergy across print and radio. Bauer could still do more.

The TV companies could all benefit from almost any media partnership, but as Vodafone has shown, the watch out is for emerging players. In a digital world, the telcos are basically the ‘ broadcasters’.

Whilst the Com Com doesn’t seem close to getting its head around this, I would predict that the telcos are and will. Traditional media companies may need to remodel their business, the telcos want to remodel theirs.

This is just the beginning.