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you would assume the return on capital invested into the agreement and the addition of more summer sports would be reflected in an increased profit"
That demonstrates you have little grasp of how this business works.
PRT buys whatever programming C7 sells it, at a pre-agreed rate. That rate - last agreed in 2013 - was severely under-market. Over the ensuing 5 years, the cost of content that Channel 7 buys/produces has gone up, so the new C7/PRT affiliation agreement passed through to PRT that significantly higher cost of content.
As i said at the time when Channel 7 sold its stake to Gordon, it was entirely obvious what was going to happen in the new affiliation agreement - Channel 7 (sans any equity interest in PRT) had no economic incentive to do anything other than turn the screws on PRT when the new affiliation agreement came up, and that's exactly what's transpired.
You're welcome to throw rotten potatoes at PRT's management to your heart's content, but i think that anger would be misplaced for two reasons:
1) FTA TV viewership is in secular decline. Fact. Advertisers are not going to increase the $ they commit to FTA TV if viewership is in decline - maybe from quarter to quarter there's some noise, but the secular trend is global & very well-established as anyone under the age of 60 ought to know. You can read the facts here:
http://www.oztam.com.au/NewsandUpdates.aspx. In 5-10 years' time at the current rate of decline, FTA will effectively be dead as a business (although it will still exist in concept) - the only thing keeping it alive at the moment is sports, and that will change as sports rights owners increasingly seek to monetize their rights by selling subscription viewing packages direct to consumers (as the AFL, for example, already does).
2) PRT doesn't control what it pays for its programming, Channel 7 does. PRT is akin to the corner store milk bar which sells a single product from a single supplier - it has almost no control over the price paid to the supplier of that single product, and PRT has almost no control over the popularity of the product and the revenue it generates.
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Either start paying profits back to shareholders or give us capital gains."
I think PRT management would love to pay a dividend, but they can't because their bankers have told them they want out (which is what bankers do when they have exposure to a business that's dying). You won't see PRT pay a dividend until they're completely debt free, which i estimate won't be until FY21.
As for capital gains, PRT management don't control the stock price. It's kinda hard to ask management of a dying company to give you capital gains.
