KEY POINTS:
Canwest MediaWorks chief executive Brent Impey looks likely to end up a winner from the review of the company - and it won't matter who ends up owning it.
Canadian owner CanWest Global Communications is considering the future of its South Pacific assets including its 70 per cent
of CanWest New Zealand.
The review also includes CanWest's 56 per cent economic interest in Australia's Network Ten in Australia.
The Canadians will almost certainly be giving senior management teams a healthy bonus after the review and any sale that follows.
It will be vitally important for CanWest to ensure that management is seen as independent during the review process.
If it changes hands, as expected, the new owner will want to tie the management to long-term contracts.
CanWest TV has benefited from the past dysfunction at arch rival TVNZ.
But most in the media industry credit the CanWest management team for at least part of the success.
Anybody considering a serious bid will want to be on good terms with management and Impey would be in a strong position to negotiate a significant management shareholding should the company be sold soon, especially if the main buyer is a private equity firm.
Impey is maintaining a strict policy of not speculating on the permutations of the present situation.
Keeping family together
One of the decisions facing the Canadians is whether to sell the NZ TV and radio assets as a job lot - keeping them as they are now - or splitting them into two sales for radio and for TV.
Television assets include TV3 and C4 while Radio Networks include Radio Live, More FM, The Breeze, The Rock, The Edge, Solid Gold, Radio Pacific and Kiwi FM.
It is a safe bet that existing management would prefer them to stay intact for the obvious reason that they make a significant bloc on the media market and would be more vulnerable on their own.
CanWest insists it does not sell radio and TV advertising time as a single package but there are still plenty of synergies.
Corporate costs at CanWest are low and are shared by the radio and TV arms.
There is a lot of cross promotion, though Impey insists CanWest radio pays commercial rates for prime time commercials on TV3.
But, beyond that detail, radio and TV still make a good fit.
Radio advertising often does well over the summer months when TV viewing and ad revenue is down.
And while television is focused on big brand advertising - through agencies - radio is focused on retail advertising in local markets. So when one sector is down, it is not unusual for the other to be up. On the face of it, radio would be better able to cope on its own than TV.
As one half of a radio duopoly - the other half is owned by a joint venture of APN and Clear Channel Communications - there will be plenty of interest.
There's extra value in TV3
Early indications have been that Fairfax is interested in radio but not TV. But with the growth of competition in online media, the two channels - TV3 and C4 - have a lot going for them.
Those new media are in need of online visual content to compete with downloadable content such as TVNZ on demand.
While TVNZ keeps some of the intellectual property rights to its programming, programme producers for TV3 own a lot of the copyright. But TV3 is also a significant producer of news content.
Given that situation, the speculation that Kerry Stokes' Seven Network is looking at TV3 is interesting. Stokes, who is cashed up after a deal with private equity, is part owner of Yahoo!7, which recently took a 51 per cent stake in the new joint venture with Telecom.
Would his new interest in Xtra affect Stokes' approach to aiming an offer for CanWest? Yahoo!Xtra is starting in New Zealand on March 1.
Fill'er up
Close Up host Mark Sainsbury didn't mention it when he interviewed PM Helen Clark about sustainable energy last week.
But he doesn't like to think about how much it costs to fill up the petrol tank on his latest acquisition - a 1963 Lincoln Continental convertible he imported from the United States.
Previously owned by Larry Funk, of Whitefish, Montana, the "Nassau beige" car arrived in Auckland around Christmas. Sainsbury said it was the stretch version of the same model used by John F. Kennedy in which he came to grief near the Grassy Knoll.
Sainsbury has long coveted the model. He drives the Lincoln around Auckland during the week. "My father-in-law loves it," he says.
Indie bouncing back: Fairfax
Fairfax says the latest Nielsen Media Research figures show the relaunch of the Independent into Independent Financial Review has boosted its numbers.
NMR figures to the end of last year showed the Indie had a readership of 36,000, Fairfax says that is compared with 30,000 a year ago.
Audit Bureau of Circulation figures will be out next month and Fairfax managing editor of business publications Bernard Hickey says they show a "significant" increase in audited net circulation.
The Indie took a big hit during the last ABC survey to September when as new owners Fairfax took a knife to the number of free papers, which resulted in an audited net circulation fall from 8908 to 3255.
That low figure highlighted the challenge ahead for the Indie if it is to match its arch rival, the National Business Review, on 12,394.
But Fairfax is launching more feature lifestyle content including a wine column written by former NBR news editor Nick Bryant.
NBR publisher Barry Colman has resisted the notion of a wine column.
Ups and down
ACP Magazines took some hits in the Nielsen media survey including its bi-monthly New Zealand Home and Entertaining falling 54,000, or 40 per cent, to 81,000.
Ralph New Zealand was down 32,000, or 18 per cent, to 140,000. Property Press was up 87,000, or 14 per cent, to 699,000.
Other notable changes were at NZ Magazines with the NZ Listener down 35,000, or 11 per cent, to 284,000, Trade and Exchange down 53,000, or 20 per cent, to 207,000 and Fairfax Magazines' On Holiday down 10,000, or 9 per cent, to 85,000.
Back to Blighty
The managing director of South Pacific Pictures, Jane Millichip, has resigned to take a new role at United Kingdom TV distribution company RDF.
Millichip has been with SPP for 18 months and played a significant role in production for the company that makes Shortland Street and Outrageous Fortune.
Chief executive and founder John Barnett said Millichip would be leaving for her native Britain in April and there were no immediate plans to find a replacement. The No 2 role at SPP was formerly held by chief operating officer Andrew Shaw. He left to head programming at Prime Television then, after Sky bought it, returned to programme-making.
As predicted by yours truly, Andrew Shaw has joined the back-to-the-future management team at TVNZ. He was named this week as the organisation's new head of commissioning and local content, a role that is similar to the old job held by Tony Holden.
