The new CEO of regional media group Super Radio Network has flatly denied his company is for sale, following widespread reports to that effect.
Mumbrella spoke to Graham Mott in just his second day in the job. Mott’s debut was accompanied by a swag of media reports — including in Mumbrella — that the network had put up the “for sale” sign. One estimate claimed the price tag was “as high as $200m”.
The reports indicated that shareholder siblings Despina Priala and George Caralis, children of network founder Bill Caralis who died in 2024, had fallen out.
When asked if the Super Radio Network had a timeline for the sale of the business, Mott replied: “We’re not for sale.”
ADVERTISEMENT
He went on to state the original story (published on Sunday) and subsequent media coverage were not correct.
Enjoying Mumbrella? Sign up for our free daily newsletter.
But what about the reference to the appointment of KPMG to handle a sale?
“We’ve engaged KPMG as of [April 1] … and that was planned some time ago, to do a valuation of the assets we’ve got. Our asset register is way, way out of date and we need to bring that up to date to comply with normal accounting standards.
“That’s why KPMG is involved, they’ve not been brought in to sell it.”
Since the sale of the business was first reported, Mumbrella asked Mott if anyone had come forward expressing interest.
“Not that I know of, no, but I stay out of that.
“That doesn’t mean to say that if someone made a magnificent offer that the owners wouldn’t consider it, but there is no for sale sign out there.”
Mott continued: “[Any offers are] best handled at board level and I’m sure that I would be told if it was, but nothing so far.”
When asked how closely Mott is working with Priala and Caralis, he said: “They are non-executive directors, so I work with the management team and the chair Joan Warner. That doesn’t mean to say that I don’t have discussions with the owners and they’re absolutely entitled to have discussions about it, but they don’t get involved in the day-to-day running of the business.”
Warner is a hands-on chair, noted Mott. He said he’d known the former CEO of Commercial Radio and Audio for some time, going back to the days when he ran 3AW and Southern Cross Radio and they had worked on several projects together including the CRA measurement overhaul in the early 2000s.
After reiterating that “the business isn’t for sale”, Mott wanted to address another report.
“The story about 50 redundancies is just fabrication, it’s all speculation, and sadly, the people who wrote the story didn’t even bother to check with anyone from Super Radio Network to verify it.”
“We always look for opportunities to manage costs. If there’s an opportunity to reduce costs if someone leaves, we might decide to combine that job with another person, and not necessarily replace that full-time person. But that’s normal business practice and I’ve been doing that for decades, by the way.”
Just to be clear, there is no slashing of staff to get the station ready for sale?
“No, no, not at all. But there’s no doubt that we want to get it in better shape, because we’re missing out a lot on agency revenue, because of the downturn in that area, as I said, for all media, not just radio.”
Super Radio Network has a contract with ARN to handle its agency sales on all stations. As to the future of that relationship, Mott said: “At whatever time is appropriate, we would always look at that, but it’s not appropriate to do that now.”
Super Radio Network has its own sales teams across the network to handle the all important direct revenue. Mott estimated the split of direct and agency sales is around 70/30.
To close, we ran the questions by the new CEO one more time — SRN is not for sale, the stories are incorrect, and all KPMG is doing is an asset audit — and Mott replied, again: “As I said before, if someone was to make a magnificent offer, an offer you couldn’t refuse, of course you’d have a look.
“But right now, we are not actively selling the company, and no offers have been made. There’s been no discussions with anybody in regard to selling the business.”