Australian Capital Television

"At the same time, he was investing in Pacific Film Laboratories, which was giving Kodak a run for market dominance by employing what was then the latest computer-assisted processing technology, as well as giving away free film to those who took photos there for processing. In 1982, he made a takeover offer for the company. This, too, became owned by ACE, and after the takeover Stokes changed the board so it had largely common membership with Australian Capital Television. Stokes took to referring to the different interests ACE held as ‘partners’, with the relationship between them and ACE ‘not that of control but rather cooperation’. He clearly saw all kinds of potential for collaboration across media and photography. Pacific Film, however, did not last as a Stokes investment. In 1985, he sold out to Kodak, ahead of the dominance of the domestic digital camera, the minilabs for processing on each street corner, and all the changes that transformed photography forever. ‘I lost a fortune,’ he told The Bulletin in 1991.9"

"Stokes didn’t want to send the old station to the knackers and start again but he did want to know how best to groom it. He commissioned Ogilvy & Mather’s Perth marketing agency to do the job. They came up with an award-winning campaign, pitched to Stokes over coffee and sausage rolls in the boardroom. The pitch was to rename the station Capital 7 and the company as Australian Capital Television, a natural play on the acronym of the Australian Capital Territory. Almost as an afterthought, the agency also suggested Stokes call his holding company Australian Capital Equity — ACE."

"WHEN PETER GAMMELL paid a visit from Scotland to see his ‘godfathers’ Stokes and Parker in mid-1987, he was impressed. Australian Capital Television had flourished to become what Gammell calls ‘an engine for growth’: its operating profits had paid off the $13 million purchase price so rapidly that only $4 million was owing on an asset now valued in tens of millions. With the golden goose 96FM and Jack Bendat’s Golden West Network (as South Western Telecasters had become), Stokes and his…"