Commission catches collusion

seven years, 28 media companies have been investigated by the Competition Commission for colluding on a discount scheme and payment terms to advertising agencies.

In 2011 the commission found that the media houses’ practices restricted competition because they did not independently determine the discounts and thereby fixed the price and trading terms in contravention of the Competition Act.

By June last year Caxton had agreed to pay a fine of R5.8-million and the Independent group R2.2million; Mediamark had agreed to a penalty of R1.013-million and United Stations a fine of R420000.

Media24 had agreed to a settlement of R13828892.26, which also included a contribution of R4.9-million to the Economic Development Fund over three years. The company also committed to provide a 25% bonus on advertising space for every rand of advertising space bought by qualifying small agencies, over three years.

The 28 media companies found to have colluded include the public broadcaster the SABC, the Mail & Guardian, Avusa (now called Tiso Blackstar), Carpe Diem Media and Primedia. More than two-thirds of the board members of Primedia, which owns Radio 702 and Eyewitness News, is made up of Africans and the MSG Afrika Group is 100% African.

Overall, there are more men (64%) than women (36%) at board level.

The second rung of decisionmakers — top management — has a higher number of white people (51%) than at board level. The department of labour describes top management as those controlling the functioning of the business, determining the overall strategy and directing the company into the future. The Mail & Guardian’s analysis looked at employment equity data, ownership and funding structures, and collated press and broadcasting complaints.

The 10 publishers include M&G Media Limited, Media24, Daily Maverick, the Independent News and Media Group, Caxton Publishers, Tiso Blackstar, amabhungane, emedia Holdings, Primedia and MSG Afrika Broadcasting.

Employee demographics data was gathered from the labour departfor ment, which keeps a record of each registered company’s employment information. These records were verified by each media group individually, except for emedia Holdings and the Daily Maverick, which said it does not discuss its finances and wouldn’t verify its employment details. However, emedia Holdings’ data was cross-referenced with the company’s 2018 annual report.

Though it seems media management resides in the hands of mostly white people, the analysis found that, overall, the media is a large employer of mainly African people (45%), followed by white (28%), coloured (19%) and Indian (7%) peers.

In terms of gender, female (55%) employees outstrip those of their male counterparts (45%), though mostly in the lower rungs of media houses.

Declining circulation and advertising revenue have posed serious problems for many media houses, leading to the closure of, among others, The Times daily print edition, the online Huffington Post SA, ANN7 (Afro Media), The New Age, recently, Ndalo Media.

Murmurs of restructuring — which usually leads to retrenchments — in established groups such as Associated Media Publishing, which publishes Cosmopolitan and House and Leisure, and Naspers-owned Media24 are plentiful.

Most of the media houses are dependent on advertising revenue, which is still dependent on circulation figures that have steadily declined. Advertising has followed suit, mostly making way for digital news delivery of which Facebook and Google are the largest recipients.

Of the 10 entities analysed, amabhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism, which comprises 12 employees, is mostly financed by donors, including crowdfunding. According to co-founder Stefaans Brümmer, they do not receive any funds from advertising.

“Our only sources of revenue are grant funders, donations in response to our crowdfunding campaign. Interestingly, crowdfunding was

and, most