Multimedia technology is creating opportunities for Perth’s daily newspaper and its TV and online partners, writes Peter Coleman.

While Seven West is transforming its business – locally, nationally and internationally – the “heart and soul of it” will be in West Australia.

“Our business has an amazing connection with the Perth and WA communities,” says chief executive Chris Wharton.

Challenges of modern media business also provide opportunities to “break out” beyond the WA border… but don’t expect that to include a bid for Fairfax Media. Chairman Kerry Stokes said a while back that SWM wasn’t interested in Fairfax, and Wharton confirmed last week that was still the position.

At any price? “We’d buy it from the liquidator,” he told me after an address at the PANPA Future Forum in Melbourne.

Earlier, Don Voelte chief executive of parent Seven Group, had suggested that media acquisitions that made Seven West more competitive would be considered. Recent weeks have seen plays for two lines of shares – each of five per cent or more – from investment groups who considered Fairfax under priced. But time will tell who sees the opportunity in that.

For the meantime, Seven West – which owns West Australian Newspapers, Pacific Magazines and the eponymous TV network plus a half share in the Yahoo!7 online portal and regional radio stations – is concentrating on its knitting. “We’ve been careful not to get ahead of ourselves – because the most important lesson for any media company embracing the future is to remember what you’ve been good at in the past,” he says.

The two years since the key SWM components were brought together have seen substantial organisational change. Wharton says running the WA newspaper and TV operations together brought “some concern on both sides” – especially in the newsrooms, where journalists are “a pretty competitive bunch”.

Staff have also been quick to understand the personal opportunities. The new line – explained by Brett McCarthy editor of the West Australian, and Seven news director Howard Gretton – still sees individual scoops and the two competing “as hard as we can”, but uniting fiercely against opponents.

“We get the smartest people from both organisations into the same room to solve problems for both operations, and that goes across all departments – editorial, advertising, marketing and IT,” Wharton says. “It has made both organisations more powerful.”

One recent cooperation saw The West’s Gold Walkley winner Steve Pennell’s work on a series of stories on the Syrian refugee crisis with Adelaide-based Seven cameraman Rob Brown. The Jordan jaunt delivered three TV news packages, five newspaper spreads and an online special for Yahoo!7 and thewest.com.au.  A commercial bonus was that the UN bought ads asking for donations, which brought “phenomenal” results.

“As a company, Seven West is learning how to use of all it resources – both people and technology – to do what we do best … tell compelling, often difficult, stories mixed with stories and products that entertain readers and viewers,” he says.

New technology and changing consumption habits affect traditional business models, but also provide opportunities, “so long as we adapt”.

The company has signed with newspaper systems vendor CCI to upgrade to its cross-platform NewsGate product to ease publication to both print and digital, and Wharton is highly complimentary of the Danish company’s “innovation and aggression” in keeping its technology in step with the fast-changing consumer habits. “We are also fortunate to be in the position of learning from their clients around the world – large and small –learning from their successes and mistakes and applying that intelligence to how it best suits our business,” he says.

“We’re finding that technology is getting much simpler and easier for media companies to use…  we’re getting control of our own destiny.”

He says the days of going “cap in hand” to a developer to spend six months or a year producing an iPad app are gone, and SWM is working to be able to devise an app in the morning and publish it in the afternoon, “just like we do newspapers and websites”.

Wharton says the absence of paywalls – increasingly unusual in the Australian metro market – is possible because its newspaper advertising market is “still fairly strong”.

He says the company invests heavily in keeping advertisers happy: “That hasn’t happened by accident,” he says.

Going against a national trend, new print products have included the glossy and “very successful” WestBusiness Insider magazine which has been very successful.

The cross-platform strategy has also included a focus on gaining control of its customer subscription base. “It seems inconceivable in a modern age – where our entire lives leave digital footprints – that we have known so little about who buys our newspapers, but for the first time we know exactly who our print customers are.”

The company plans to use the information in “all sorts of ways”. One is to use a “large and loyal” home subscriber base as the foundation of moves to expand digital offerings.

The relationship with national digital partner Yahoo!7 has also been brought closer, learning about their business and teaching them about SWM. “The results have been amazing,” Wharton says. “By just by a few tweaks and some extra effort we increased the video plays on our website by 50 per cent in a month, with revenue following. The site has been recognised at the Asian Digital Media Awards for its multimedia coverage of Anzac Day and bushfires.

A Multipass project with Yahoo!7 will help maximise crossover potential online between Seven and The West. It will enable everything on the site including advertisements, adapt to whatever device is being used. Seven’s catch-up site 7Plus is also going on thewest.com.au website.

“We also see digital as a way of breaking out of the state border that has often constrained our business,” he says. Recent projects have included a partnership with Health Engine – which now operates out of WAN’s Osborne Park headquarters – and allows users to book medical and dental appointments online. The site has “massive potential” and dovetails with a new website for The West’s health and medicine section.

An international airline site – airlineratings.com – leverages respect for aviation writer GeoffreyThomas to give star ratings to 425 airlines, and appraise services and safety. So far the site has been viewed in almost 200 countries.

Wharton says SWM’s West Australian is transforming into a multimedia operation that “thinks big while being even more relevant to the neighbour down the street”.

As the businesses adapt in a rapidly changing media world, it tries not to forget “where you have come from and what you are good at”.

• Adapted from an address to the PANPA Future Forum 2013.