Originally published: Unmade, 26 June 2024
Pureprofile chair Michael Anderson prepares for the AI gold rush: ‘This is going to be the most disruptive technology the planet’s ever seen’
This week, Unmade sits down with Michael Anderson, the former Austereo boss, as he steps back into the limelight as the chair of Pureprofile.
Anderson is one of Australian media’s most storied executives, having run Austereo when it was at the height of its powers before being taken over by Southern Cross Media. Anderson went on to be a board member of Fairfax Media and Ooh Media before taking on the thankless job of CEO of New Zealand’s Mediaworks.
The conversation – recorded the same day Anderson chaired his first Pureprofile board meeting – ranges across what generative AI-driven synthetic data means for the company (he argues it could be an opportunity); what his board needs to do to persuade the stock market to value the company more highly; and whether a company as small as Pureprofile still belongs on the ASX.
Anderson also reflects on the tough media landscape and the lessons that the decline of Mediaworks and its axing of Newshub has for Australian networks. “The value of having news as you lead into prime time became so expensive that the value equation collapsed. I could easily see that trajectory occurring at some point in the future in Australia.”
He also discusses how advertisers have abruptly turned their backs on Australia’s broadcasters: “This has been coming for a long time and seems to have taken forever to get here. And then all of a sudden is really happening quickly.”
“Given that we’re as close to an economic recession as we’re going to get, if not tip over, there doesn’t seem to be any let up to what media is experiencing in advertising in the short to medium term, which means it could actually be quite a sustained structural shift.”
Anderson also discussed what happened to the merged Southern Cross Austereo after he left, including the defection of Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson to ARN when SCA boss Rhys Holleran decided not to offer them a long term contract. Having paid $740m for Austereo, the whole company has now declined to less than a $150m valuation. Says Anderson: “They’ve done a lot of things that have contributed to that – so some of that has been management failure, board failure. Losing Kyle and Jackie O would be one of those things you’d put into the basket of going ‘that was unnecessary’.”
