A Nightly vote of no confidence in Seven’s influence

Hear the one about the media mogul who had to start up a new media outlet because his existing one wasn’t doing what he wanted?

Kerry Stokes’s The Nightly — an online version of that quaint tradition of the evening commuter newspaper — launches today and represents a major vote of no-confidence in Stokes’ Seven Network. As Crikey reported recently, the only reason Stokes retains his major minority stake in Seven West Media (which plumbed to an all-time low of 22 cents on Friday) is for its “strategic” value: its politically conservative influence via the Seven Network and The West Australian newspaper.

The Nightly is also reportedly backed by right-wing climate denialist mining heiress Gina Rinehart (she also invested in Ten in the Lachlan Murdoch era, and had a $300 million stake in Fairfax that she sold in 2015), fossil fuel advocate and mining billionaire Chris Ellison and Harvey Norman CEO Katie Page.

Stokes, Rinehart and the rest of the fossil fuel lobby essentially control Western Australia via a compliant Labor Party, which acts as watchdog and policy fixer for the extractive resources sector. But the Seven Network, which backs war criminals and provides reliably pro-Coalition news and current affairs, is both struggling financially and clearly failing to deliver the kind of influence over politicians and public opinion that was once par for the course for a free-to-air network.

The Nightly, which shares an editor-in-chief with the West Australian, will be “economically conservative” and will, according to the Financial Review, carry advertising from two of Australia’s most toxic and politically powerful industries, fossil fuels (Woodside) and gambling (Ladbrokes). One of its contributors will be the former editor in chief of The Australian, Chris Dore, who lost his job at News Corp in late 2022 after making lewd comments to a woman at a company function.

While fossil fuels companies appear relatively safe under the pro-gas Albanese government, which even consulted them on how little Petroleum Resources Rent Tax they should pay on offshore gas, gambling is in the firing line in Canberra in relation to the saturation level of advertising the industry inflicts on television viewers through the free-to-air industry, including on Channel Seven. Nine Entertainment has already fired a warning shot at the government not to cut off precious revenue flows from the gambling sector. A new outlet to push “economically conservative” (i.e. anti-regulatory) views will be advantageous for the gambling companies.

With billionaire backers, The Nightly could lose money for years or decades while the likes of Stokes, Rinehart and Ellison, Charles Foster Kane-like, continue to fund it — and claim tax losses from it. Indeed, that might be the only non-government “viable” media model going forward. But the online newspaper’s target niche is hard to understand: the east coast market is already served by right-wing News Corp tabloids that have the advantage of local sports coverage as well as the standard mix of celebrity gossip, if-it-bleeds-it-leads local crime and car prangs, and clickbait lifestyle guff.

The Australian and the Financial Review already cater for higher-brow conservatives whose lips don’t move when they read, while the plagiarism central at the Daily Mail has the nip-slip and granny panty celebrity market sewn up. How east coast audiences will react to what will essentially be a West Australian fossil fuel industry attempt to tell them what to think is unclear — but it’s clear that the Seven Network isn’t delivering the goods on that front.

And who will be the target readers? Last week Seven had an average Monday-to-Friday audience in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane of 542,000 while rival Nine’s audience in the three cities was a bit larger — 582,000. They are news-interested people, mostly aged 50 or more. That might be the target for The Nightly, but they like their news with pictures and in short bursts — then there are their favourite newsreaders as well.

These people are mostly at home by 6pm and have a long-standing (if fading) habit of watching the news broadcast. ABC News viewers an hour later would not be interested. A couple of hundred thousand people are watching the ABC, Ten and SBS from 6-7pm (which is the time slot for the Seven and Nine News). By 7pm, The Nightly will be old news, digital dross for someone’s fish and chips.