Consolidation needed in regional media

Regional media needs to consolidate to survive and the government needs to act fast by removing more ownership restrictions to make sure Australians outside metropolitan cities won’t be "living in the dark", Antony Catalano said. "If there isn’t change, regional Australians will be living in the dark when it comes to news and information," Mr Catalano told The Australian Financial Review following a panel discussion at the Mumbrella Publish conference on Thursday.

"There just won’t be suppliers. You can’t have this multitude of players all trying to do the same thing in a diminishing market." Mr Catalano said his ambition is to turn ACM into a similar business model to Nine following the Fairfax merger, with a range of different mediums to take to advertisers. "I want to grow our business and I want to look to consolidate it. Potentially are we a multimedia regional business that has print, digital, TV, radio? They are things we should look at," he said.