View.com.au portal closes, ACM to unveil new property branding | The Canberra Times

The View.com.au property branding of regional publisher ACM’s newspapers and websites will disappear from June.

This follows an announcement by View Media Group Pty Ltd (VMG) that its property listings portal at View.com.au will close.

Real estate listings portal View.com.au will be closed.

The board of VMG said its restructuring would allow the business to focus on its most profitable and growing divisions providing services to the real estate and developer market.

The closure of the portal affects a number of VMG roles, with some redundancies expected.

ACM managing director Tony Kendall said the View changes did not affect the publisher’s own property reporting team led by national property news director Jen Melocco.

The ACM advertising sales team’s “activity in providing local real estate customers with excellent advertising solutions” would also continue.

“While View.com.au was a bold attempt to reshape the highly competitive residential real estate listings market, its closure will allow ACM to explore new opportunities to strengthen our core business and serve the needs of property buyers and sellers in our regional markets,” Mr Kendall said.

The print and online property sections of ACM are set to be rebranded.

New property branding for ACM, the publisher of this masthead, will be unveiled in the coming weeks.

In a message to ACM staff, Mr Kendall said that “while market conditions remain challenging for media companies, ACM is a stable and profitable business”.

“The company’s underlying financials are based on the strong foundation of our long-standing local mastheads, the newspapers we publish and the apps and websites that continue to attract new subscribers thanks to the trusted local news we provide to communities across regional and rural Australia,” he said.

“As we focus on growing digital subscriptions and delivering digital solutions for our advertising partners, the ACM business will continue to evolve and innovate to meet the commercial challenges of today and secure a sustainable future for our regional and rural journalism.”

Ms Melocco said ACM’s network of news sites and newspapers would “continue to lead the conversation on real estate in Canberra, in our growing regional cities and across regional Australia”.

“With dedicated property journalists across the country at our major ACM titles, we are in a strong position to continue to inform our audiences on the important issues of housing and real estate,” she said.

Jen Melocco is ACM’s national property news director.

Mr Kendall said ACM had made a number of strategic investments in recent years, including acquiring an interest in Southern Cross Media Group Limited, which owns both audio and television media assets, and growing adjacent businesses such as ViewJobs and MeHelp.

“These investments were pursued to diversify our revenue streams,” he said. “While some of these investments have underperformed, there are some which are growing ahead of expectations and which have considerable strategic value.”

Mr Kendall said ACM’s core business remained “stable and profitable”.

“The focus of that core business remains unchanged: to provide the local news coverage that regional Australians demand and deserve and to deliver the advertising solutions that meet the needs of our commercial partners,” he said.

With a capable and experienced management team “committed to the continuity and stability of the business”, the ACM was “a strong organisation” with “a clear vision, guiding principles and strategic goals that set us up for a positive future”.

The mastheads of the ACM network include The Canberra Times, Newcastle Herald, Bendigo Advertiser and Illawarra Mercury.

ACM dropped the former Fairfax Media-owned Domain brand from its property sections in 2020 after the network of regional and agricultural mastheads was sold into private ownership by Nine Entertainment following Nine’s merger with Fairfax.

Alex Waislitz, founder and chairman of Thorney Investment Group, and former Domain chief Antony Catalano took control of ACM in July 2019 and launched VMG in 2022.

The boards of 20 Cashews Pty Ltd, which owns ACM and VMG, placed executive chairman Catalano on a leave of absence last month after he was charged with a number of alleged offences, including assault, following an incident at a Melbourne apartment in which a woman suffered a fractured tailbone and was hospitalised.

In a statement, VMG said its four “profitable and growing” divisions would continue to provide clients with “the integrated services required to prosper in the highly competitive Australian real estate market”.

The Property Agency, Today Media and AD Group were “growing revenue at double digit rates with strong momentum” and Acquire was “obtaining exceptional revenue growth”.

VMG also has a 50 per cent interest in Propic Pty Ltd and a 17 per cent shareholding in Beevo Pty Ltd.

“Both businesses are on exciting growth trajectories,” the VMG statement said.

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View.com.au portal closes, ACM to unveil new property branding | The Canberra Times

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