Many thanks to Jimmy an GrizzlyAu for joining the PRT discussion...

Many thanks to Jimmy an GrizzlyAu for joining the PRT discussion and posting some very high quality posts.

While I agree with most of what has been said, I believe that numbers will only tell you part of the story and deeper investigation may produce some interesting findings. I have also gone through the financial statements of PRT and those of other FTA networks and agree that revenues have been in a constant state of decline over a number of years. I believe though that we are starting to see a bottom and expect revenues to turn around sooner rather than later. I don't expect them to return to the level of the past but I do believe they will stabilise and we will see a slow revenue increase over the next few years.

At the end of the day it comes down to one thing - advertising revenue. Over the last few years more and more of Australia’s advertising revenue has gone from TV to digital platforms, mainly Google (You Tube) and Facebook. The tide is now turning. Recent headlines regarding a You Tube ad boycott and Facebook’s official estimate that ad metrics have been inflated by 60 to 80 per cent have seen revenues for these two companies reduce substantially. Companies are now starting to question the actual worth of digital advertising and whether it does what it promised to do ie build brand awareness as well as targeting the specific groups that it was supposed to reach.

http://fortune.com/2017/03/27/google-youtube-ad-boycott/
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...f/news-story/a3f8fbe017445387a39994553b67c6da

On the political front, the noise coming out of Canberra is that there will be a reduction in licencing fees in the budget to be handed down on the 9^th of May. Unfortunately one of the reasons for this is that it is likely to be as a replacement for revenues likely to be lost when a new bill placing restrictions on gambling advertising is submitted.
While this may seem a bad thing for FTA networks it is a necessary part of the political gaming by the Communications Minister to finally get the Nick Xenophon Party on board to finally pass the Media Reform Bill. With Nick Xenophon and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party on side the Coalition will finally have the numbers required. (One Nation has been appeased by changes to the 457 visa and support of sugar cane growers in the Burdekin sugar bowl south of Townsville).
http://www.copyright link/business/...-new-media-package-for-budget-20170420-gvp88s