Job cuts, takeovers and mergers can’t fix the mess that is Australian TV

From job cuts at Seven, to the Murdoch’s streamer acquisition, to Nine offloading regional station assets, it’s clear Australian TV is circling the drain.

Jun 17, 2026

4 min read

As the once culturally dominant mass of linear television withers in the dying light of its apparent final days, the industry’s last true believers seem to be the billionaire owners who leaned into its power to build their own.

Is there anything they can do to save their once-money-making television oligopolies as they shed viewers and the advertising dollars following them out the door? The figures are grim: advertising spend on the big free-to-air channels has inexorably trended down, just about every month since Australia emerged from COVID in early 2022, with only a brief respite from all those election ads around last year’s vote.