I wondered, when I heard the news that Fairfax is selling or closing 28 of their mastheads in this country, whether the wise old heads at the Commerce Commission were hearing the same thing I was.
Fairfax produces the Stuff website and a bunch of papers like the Christchurch Mail, the Napier Mail, the Invercargill Eye, the South Canterbury Herald, the Clutha Leader. And it is the company that was looking to merge with the company that owns Newstalk ZB: NZME. That merger was blocked by the commission, appealed and lost, and is now being appealed again.
The grounds for the appeal, as I have said a number of times, seem sound to me. The Commerce Commission is dangerous in its outlook. The out-workings of that view we may well be seeing in the Fairfax news yesterday.
That is not to say that if the merger went ahead that rationalisation wouldn't happen, because it would. But what we know for sure is what Fairfax told the commission originally: if the merger doesn't go ahead, it's the end game.
The end game being, well, what we're seeing at 28 mastheads. Fairfax is a company in trouble.