Time was when you needed your own press to make what the IDF would call a ‘limited incursion’ into hostile territory; online with The Nightly, Seven West has proved that it’s no longer so (writes Peter Coleman).

And it seems the concept is working beautifully: journalists in Perth have much of the day to prepare a thoughtful accumulation of news and comment, before lobbing it ‘over East’ into the heartlands of Sydney and Melbourne at 6pm local time.

Latest figures show that is exactly where it’s hitting home, with only about a fifth of readership in WA. That state’s pervasive ‘export mentality’ is working beautifully, with latest Ipsos Iris figures (August) showing a 2.84 million unique audience, with 7.4 million page views. Not bad from a standing start in February; not so far below The Australian on the news website rankings, and reportedly ahead of the Australian Financial Review.

The figures put the majority of The Nightly’s audience in NSW and Victoria, and 56 per cent of it, aged under 55.

They’ll be loving that at Nine where there has already been animosity (surprise, surprise) over the cost of printing, or not printing, the AFR for its limited WA print audience.

The Nightly’s Neale Prior wrote in May that the AFR was “to blame for its own demise”, what it called the culmination of four decades of retreat from WA: “If Nine Entertainment wanted to show its commitment to the WA market, it could be talking to Ive about reviving the Mandurah printing press,” Prior wrote. Like that’s going to happen.

Australia’s biggest publishers have already made it clear that print is no longer of prime importance. Gone are the days when News put two large presses into Perth just to print the Sunday Times (now sold to Seven) and what then might have been the five-figure WA circulation of The Australian. Nine, of course, owns no presses.

Kerry Stokes’ historic affinity for print was seen not only in SWM’s giant Osborne Park printery, but by a plaque in the press hall of the Canberra Times (now an ACM asset), where he forked out for a substantial double-width press.

What has evolved is that – with a few exceptions such as SpotPress, Shepparton News publisher McPherson Media and Today – News has effectively become the only major newspaper printer in the East, and Seven the only one in the West, where the Stokes and Murdoch camps appear to rub along.

Whether that will continue, remains to be seen with the Nightly ‘incursion’ and the obstruction Seven might present to News’ broadcast ambitions. And of course, you no longer need a big aerial to be a broadcaster.

So let’s hear it for owner-publishers: Rupert Murdoch is still one, of course, and it’s likely it is the newspaperman in Lachlan that is driving the succession sideshow taking place in Reno, Nevada.

Morry Schwartz deserves a place in the list for The Saturday Paper (as well as his Quarterly Essay and The Monthly), and I’d include former Fairfax/Nine exec Chris Janz and wish him well with Capital Brief.

Incidentally, south-east Asia readers can catch him in Singapore for WAN-Ifra’s Asian Media Leaders Summit (November 6-7) along with, as it happens, Nine Publishing’s newest managing director Tory Maguire. Antony Catalano of course has a place in a list of Australian owner-publishers, but I wonder whether he’s really at ease there, even if he belongs.

And yes, with son Ryan taking care of business, and Anthony De Ceglie stirring things up in the newsrooms of SWM – which is small enough to be a plaything, relative to Seven Group diversions such as the Cat agency, Coates and now Boral – Kerry Stokes (84) is surely having fun.

Peter Coleman

Pictured: The Nightly in SWM’s August investor presentation. Note: SWM at A$282 million, accounts for less than two per cent of the A$17.6 billion market cap of Seven Group, its 40 per cent shareholder.