Corporate deals, a family feud and court battles

Warner Bros. Discovery’s launch of HBO Max in Australia didn’t help consumers juggling multiple streaming subscriptions, but that too could soon(ish) disappear, if Netflix is successful in its deal to acquire the company.

Network 10 owner Paramount, which is also vying for Warner Bros, also got a new owner in billionaire nepo baby David Ellison this year. That deal is looking increasingly unlikely, though, thanks to Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who was part-backing it, backing out.

Family feud

The story with most intrigue outside the usual media watchers was the culmination of the Murdoch family feud over who would be the successor to the family empire. It had everything and more that we came to expect from the people Succession’s Roy family are based on.

Ultimately, Lachlan won. His siblings buckled under the pressure of lots of money. Lucky them!

One thing he did lose in 2025 was his trusted, long-term advisor Siobhan McKenna, who retired from everything Murdoch-related just one week after this masthead profiled her for Good Weekend.

It didn’t stop her from turning up and partying into the night at Lachlan’s Christmas party this month, which the prime minister didn’t show up to. Unlike last year, there was no federal election on the horizon and Rupert wasn’t going, so was it really worth it? Probably not.

Another court battle reached its conclusion, finally. That was disgraced Commando Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation battle against The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, which after a years-long slog in the courts finalised with a $13.5 million bill for his backer, Kerry Stokes. The papers also had a big win in their defamation defence against orthopaedic surgeon Munjed Al Muderis, who sued after a series of articles alleging negligent practices.

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Despite Ten’s defamation win against Bruce Lehrmann, Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz were both bankrupted by Linda Reynolds, who had launched a separate defamation matter in the WA Supreme Court, while Lehrmann himself lost his appeal of the Network Ten case.

Loser of the year

Of the major media companies, ARN Media was the major loser of 2025. Most plainly because its share price is down 43 per cent across the year, far more than any other Australian media stock, and because its Kyle and Jackie O contract ($200 million for 10 years) has gone from bad to worse. Not only is it a ratings disaster in Melbourne and has attracted the ire of the regulator, but has become a revenue disaster as advertisers pull spend, forcing a total rethink of the national rollout.

Winner of the year

On the flipside to ARN, its commercial competitors Southern Cross and Nova could be considered the winners. Both were major beneficiaries of ARN’s cratering advertising share, the Kyle and Jackie O story sucked attention away from the performance of their own stars’ performance, Southern Cross landed its merger deal two years after ARN tried to break it up, and its share price was up 27 per cent for the year at time of writing.

Another winner was also commercial media, which has thus far avoided regulation on selling advertising space to gambling firms. The government brought in its streaming quotas legislation around 18 months later than it was expected, and new comms minister Anika Wells helped push through reforms at breakneck speed with the kids social media ban, backed by advocacy group 36 Months and News Corp. The speed at which this was enshrined in law makes inaction on gambling even more glaring.

Broadcast fight

There’s a sense the lack of clarity over this policy may be holding up the NRL’s broadcast rights process. With gambling ads forming such a significant portion of sports broadcasting revenue, and no clarity over how any potential policy might impact each potential bidders, there is likely to be hesitation before committing to a multibillion-dollar contract.

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The NRL may have missed its moment to secure its next contract at the peak of the market, having already taken a cut deal last time around.

Newsroom moves

The Herald will have a new editor – Jordan Baker – in 2026, The Guardian weathered its own political storm in the capital, and there were surprisingly no major News Corp changes but for company loyalist Nick Papps getting the big job at the California Post. Laura Tingle moved on from 7.30 at the ABC, the broadcaster also finally putting Q+A out of its misery, as did Network 10 with The Project.

The ABC will have $50 million extra to play with thanks to a government deal with the Greens, which gives Hugh Marks extra hopes of creating another Bluey. Speaking of weathering crises, Marks has made it through his first nine months as ABC boss mostly unscathed.

The hugely embarrassing Antoinette Lattouf legal saga (which cost the ABC $2.6 million) is largely a stain on his predecessors. He cleverly seized on a Media Watch story about Kim Williams′ alleged interference early, putting to bed any questions of how the pair would work together. And as the year came to a close, he batted off Sky News and The Australian’s attempts to conflate the BBC/Trump crisis, two Senate estimates bashings, and he even came away with a very friendly interview with the News Corp broadsheet. Result?

There’s always hurdles, of course, and there’s still a pay dispute set to roll into the new year which could prompt staff to walk off the job. There’s one of those at SBS, too, though the lack of a permanent SBS chair and managing director makes that one even more of a head-scratcher.

What more will Australia’s shrinking media class bring us in 2026?