Hugh Marks underwhelmed markets and marketing when he was appointed Nine CEO five years ago. Who was he? Why was he running Nine? 

Marks proved the naysayers very wrong. When he started, Nine was worth circa $1 billion. Today it’s market capitalisation is $5bn.  

Now it’s Sneesby’s turn. He has a unique set of capabilities among TV network bosses, and most media company chiefs, period.           

Point 1: Sneesby does code

Mike Sneesby’s elevation from Stan to run Nine yesterday is a signal that whatever Nine needs to do next to retain its premier position among broadcaster-based media businesses, it will be based on content and code. 

Back in 2014 Sneesby got the green light to build subscription video on demand service Stan – a working acronym as the legend goes for what was supposed to be an all-broadcaster backed service from Seven Ten And Nine. It was just as Netflix was lighting up the universe and Sneesby didn’t and couldn’t emulate the now celebrated Netflix in-house tech suite. That would have meant building everything from streaming and compression software to recommendation engines and clever user interfaces, user experience design, subscription e-commerce platforms, customer database management and analytics.

Instead, helped by his exposure to telecommunications at Optus, running an IPTV venture in Dubai and his time at the now jettisoned joint venture of ninemsn, Sneesby went about bolting together off-the-shelf software across all of those core technology requirements. And it worked. Brand Stan was widely scoffed at by the commentariat when it was launched and framed as a near hopeless Australian outsider. Today Stan has 2.2 million active subscribers and 6 million on its database. As Sneesby alluded to a few weeks back in this Mi3 story, that customer database, already loaded with credit card details, provided an already segmented and addressable marketing base for Stan's new Stan Sport deal with Rugby Union. Tick for Sneesby.     

Point 2: Sneesby does content

Aside from building out the tech stack at Stan, Sneesby had to strike streaming content rights deals with Hollywood film and TV studios. He gets content – local and offshore. And as the stories go, he can cut it with what were his broadcast peers across the three commercial TV networks during the LA Screenings, an annual ritual where rights deals are struck for upcoming shows and broadcaster back catalogues. Sneesby was more than able at the negotiating table for Stan – and around LA’s watering holes where somehow all the Australian broadcasters would end up occasionally with beers at hand, competing again.

But for Nine’s board, it was this exposure to broadcast-style content deals and programming that was in Sneesby’s favour over Chris Janz, Nine’s boss of publishing. Content was another tick for Sneesby.  

Point 3: Does Sneesby do culture and commercials? 

This is likely to be Sneesby’s biggest challenge. The rumblings during the race with Chris Janz for the top job was that Sneesby was a micro-manager at Stan and that the old Fairfax publishing business was hopeful that Janz was the man. 

There are some brutal scenarios of politics and positioning between the two candidates in the duel for the big gig. The question now is whether Sneesby can keep Janz in the tent and feisty masthead editorial teams happy.

Janz negotiated the recent Google deal – now said to be worth circa $45m a year. That’s part of Sneesby’s publishing agenda. 

But word has it the powerful programmers at Nine were hopeful of an outsider getting the gig – Carl Fennessy from Endemol-Shine production studios fame. 

So powerful teams at two of Sneesby’s most important and powerful business units wanted someone else.

Does Sneesby have what’s needed to placate and ignite them or replace with better talent if the insiders remain restless? And can he expand his commercial nous from building a digital media challenger to running a legacy media beast still in transition?

It’s the question du jour. If the rumblings are true about his leadership style, then adjustments will be critical – he’s jumping from a couple of hundred people to 5,000. And he’s also got to switch on smarts for the $14 billion advertising market, something he has not needed to concern himself with running an ad-free media subscription business.

Which gets us to Chief Sales Officer Michael Stephenson. Under a Janz regime, there was much banter about his future. The two are said not to be the closest. But with Sneesby, the inside view is that Stephenson is safe. And Sneesby will need that continuity given how reliant broadcast is on advertising.  

Nine is now Mike Sneesby. Everyone’s watching.