Enjoying Mumbrella? Sign up for our free daily newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\nBut what about the reference to the appointment of KPMG to handle a sale?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve engaged KPMG as of [April 1] \u2026 and that was planned some time ago, to do a valuation of the assets we\u2019ve 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 Our asset register is way, way out of date and we need to bring that up to date to comply with normal accounting standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why KPMG is involved, they\u2019ve not been brought in to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the sale of the business was first reported, Mumbrella asked Mott if anyone had come forward expressing interest.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot that I know of, no, but I stay out of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean to say that if someone made a magnificent offer that the owners wouldn\u2019t consider it, but there is no for sale sign out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mott continued: \u201c[Any offers are] best handled at board level and I\u2019m sure that I would be told if it was, but nothing so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked how closely Mott is working with Priala and Caralis, he said: \u201cThey are non-executive directors, so I work with the management team and the chair Joan Warner. That doesn\u2019t mean to say that I don\u2019t have discussions with the owners and they\u2019re absolutely entitled to have discussions about it, but they don\u2019t get involved in the day-to-day running of the business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warner is a hands-on chair, noted Mott. He said he\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n
After reiterating that \u201cthe business isn\u2019t for sale\u201d, Mott wanted to address another report.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe story about 50 redundancies is just fabrication, it\u2019s all speculation, and sadly, the people who wrote the story didn\u2019t even bother to check with anyone from Super Radio Network to verify it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always look for opportunities to manage costs. If there\u2019s 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\u2019s normal business practice and I\u2019ve been doing that for decades, by the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just to be clear, there is no slashing of staff to get the station ready for sale?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no, not at all. But there\u2019s no doubt that we want to get it in better shape, because we\u2019re missing out a lot on agency revenue, because of the downturn in that area, as I said, for all media, not just radio.\u201d<\/p>\n
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: \u201cAt whatever time is appropriate, we would always look at that, but it\u2019s not appropriate to do that now.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
To close, we ran the questions by the new CEO one more time \u2014 \u00a0SRN is not for sale, the stories are incorrect, and all KPMG is doing is an asset audit \u2014 and Mott replied, again: \u201cAs I said before, if someone was to make a magnificent offer, an offer you couldn\u2019t refuse, of course you\u2019d have a look.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut right now, we are not actively selling the company, and no offers have been made. There\u2019s been no discussions with anybody in regard to selling the business.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new CEO of\u00a0regional media group Super Radio Network has flatly denied his company is for sale, following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,283463,148258,136,230808],"class_list":{"0":"post-577850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-graham-mott","12":"tag-james-manning","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-super-radio-network"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}