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overview
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Overview
This profile looks at Australian broadcaster WIN Corporation,
Bruce Gordon and the former ENT group.
It covers -
 WIN
As of 2001 WIN Corporation - controlled by Bruce Gordon
- held one metropolitan, nine regional and one remote
television broadcast licences, with a potential audience
of 26% of the population. WIN has one radio station in
Wollongong and owns film/video production house Crawfords
(est 1945).
Gordon worked as a magician during the 1939-45 War, in
promotion for the Tivoli theatre circuit and managed Australian
sales for Desilu Studios (ie US comedienne Lucille Ball's
production house) before serving as an executive for Paramount
International Distribution.
He gained control of Television Wollongong Transmission
Ltd (later rebadged as WIN) in 1979. Gordon expanded its
operations in the 1990s, buying out the other shareholders
in 1991 after buying two licenses in Queensland and the
Crawford film/video production house that dated from 1945
and passed through the control of Rupert Murdoch
and Christopher Skase. By the
end of the decade WIN had licenses and transmitters in
NSW, WA (as the dominant regional broadcaster), QLD, SA,
Victoria, ACT and Tasmania.
The group also operated property and land development
operations, network management and a radio station in
Wollongong
ENT
and the Examiner
Expansion included acquisition of the Examiner-Northern
TV (ENT) group in 1994 for around $90 million.
ENT's origins date from the preceding century, with the
Rolph family's purchase of the Launceston Examiner
in 1890. Examiner Newspapers Pty Ltd established a dominant
position in the somewhat airless world of Tasmanian publishing,
vying with the Hobart Mercury (later acquired
by the Herald & Weekly Times group and thus coming
under News Corp control).
The Launceston Examiner was founded in 1842 as
the weekly Examiner & Commercial & Agricultural
Advertiser by Congregationalists James Aikenhead
(1815-1887), JS Waddell and John West (1809-1873). West
was editor of Fairfax's Sydney
Morning Herald from 1854. The Examiner absorbed
the Launceston Advertiser in 1847 and the Cornwall
Chronicle in 1880, having become a daily in 1877.
In 1872 it launched the Weekly Examiner (renamed
the Tasmanian in 1881 when the Examiner acquired the weekly
Tasmanian) and published until 1895.
Aikenhead's nephew Henry Button (1829-1914) became an
apprentice printer at the Examiner in 1844, was editor
of the Hobart Town Colonial Times in 1852 after
an unsuccessful stint in the Victorian goldfields, and
acquired a stake in the Examiner in 1857. Thirty years
later he became sole proprietor, selling most of his stake
to accountants Alexander Young and William Rolph (1864-1948)
in 1897. Their partnership was restructured as W R Rolph
& Sons in 1916.
The Examiner published the Launceston Weekly Courier
from 1901 to 1935. In 1924 Rolph launched the Saturday
Evening Express (which appeared from 1924 until 1984,
being replaced by the Sunday Examiner in 1984), followed
by radio station 7EX in 1938. William's eldest son Gordon
(1893-1959) expanded the family’s interests into
timber, paper, agriculture and investments; he was knighted
in 1948 as a large fish in an increasingly provincial
pond.
Under the leadership of son-in-law Edmund Rouse (1926-2002)
- reported to have explained that he drove a Rolls Royce
for its effect on pedestrians: "in Launceston it
makes them spit; in Hobart they throw up" - Examiner
expanded into radio and television stations on the island
and the mainland, expanding its timber and property holdings.
During the 1980s the Examiner published the Tasmanian
Mail, a free weekly with circulation across the state.
By the late 1980s Examiner-Northern TV Pty Ltd was gaining
most revenue from outside Tasmania and from electronic
media rather than print.
In 1989 Rouse was caught attempting to bribe a member
of the Tasmanian parliament to support the minority government
of Premier Robin Gray. ENT sold the Examiner
to Rural Press group (60%)
and Harris & Co (publishers of the Burnie Advocate)
for $28 million in 1990. Rouse interests are reported
to have lost heart and after further deacquisitions the
group went to WIN.
Sunraysia
and Presser
As of 2006 WIN had a substantial stake in Sunraysia Television,
former holder of the STW 9 television broadcast licence
in Perth and thus of Channel Nine Perth. The company was
controlled by Eva Presser, whose family appears to be
Australia's largest marketer of prune juice.
Presser acquired a minor station in Mildura, sold Queensland
broadcasting investments to Skase
at a considerable profit and acquired control of STW 9
for $95 million from the receivers of Bond
Media in 1989, disposing of the Mildura station to ENT
for $18 million.
She resisted a 1995 takeover bid by WIN for the Perth
station, which remained Sunraysia's only significant television
broadcasting asset.
In February 2007 PBL Media announced
that it would acquire 100% of Sunraysia Television subsidiary
Swan Television & Radio Broadcasters Pty Ltd (ie Channel
Nine Perth) for $136.4 million. WIN successfully made
a $163 million counter offer. Its bid for Newcastle-based
NBN was trumped by PBL Media's $250 million offer. WIN
then agreed to buy Adelaide's Channel 9 from Southern
Cross Broadcasting for $105 million. Southern Cross
had acquired the station in 1998 for $97.5 million.
studies
There has been no major independent biography of Gordon
or of study of WIN. Some insights are offered by reports
of licence inquiries by the Australian Broadcasting Authority
(ABA), available on its site, and in works dealing with
competitors such as Packer, Murdoch
and Bond.
For ENT there is an intelligent account in Stephen Tanner's
The rise and fall of Edmund Rouse (PDF).
For Aikenhead, West, Button and the Rolphs see volumes
1, 3 and 11 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography
(Carlton: Melbourne Uni Press 1969 and 1988).
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