Mediaweek’s Media Movers charts the biggest people moves in the industry over the past week.
This week:
Seven’s chief revenue officer, Kurt Burnette, chief marketing officer, Melissa Hopkins, and head of sport and managing director of Seven Melbourne, Lewis Martin are confirmed to be exiting the business, with SWM MD and CEO, Jeff Howard saying he “sincerely thank Kurt, Lewis, and Mel for their contributions to Seven and they leave with our best wishes for the future.”
Under the new model, SWM will have three divisions: Television, Digital, and Western Australia. This also includes a slew of new leadership appointments. Seven’s chief content officer, entertainment programming, Angus Ross, has been appointed Group MD, Seven Television.
SWM chief digital officer Gereurd Roberts has been appointed Group MD, Seven Digital. Maryna Fewster continues as CEO, SWM Western Australia, responsible for SWM’s broadcast, digital and print brands in that market.
Trent Dickeson, currently director of operations and transformation, has been appointed to the new role of chief operating officer. Acting chief financial officer Craig Haskins has been appointed chief financial officer.
Previously director of content scheduling, Brook Hall has been appointed as Seven Network’s chief content officer. Seven Adelaide managing director Vikki Friscic has been appointed head of sales strategy and enablement.
Georgie Nichols has resigned from her role as Seven Network’s national sales director, Mediaweek confirmed. Leaving of her own accord as the business announces redundancies, she will stay on to help with a handover for the role before leaving Seven in August. Succeeding Nichols is Katie Finney, appointed to the new role of national television sales director, effective immediately.
Foxtel has seen another senior staff member call time on their career. This time it is group general manager factual Jim Buchan.
Former CEO APAC and global growth officer of WeAre8, Lizzie Young, has been appointed CEO of audio industry body, Commercial Radio & Audio (CRA).
Ryan Ambrose has been promoted to the new role of Melbourne head of investment at PHD Australia.
Mick Carroll has departed The Sunday Telegraph…but he hasn’t left the building.
News Corp Australia’s Pippa Leary is to become managing director of the free news and lifestyle division, spanning news.com.au, the NCA newswire, and lifestyle digital brands. Carroll becomes editor-in-chief of the division. The weekend paper’s new editor is Anna Caldwell.
Thrive PR and Communications has appointed Liliana Molina as its business director in Queensland, to drive local client growth and the agency’s Olympic strategy.
Sales lead and founding member of Snap ANZ, Matt Coote, is leaving his role in the coming months after eight years, marking the second recent sales team departure from the social media company.
Memo Hayek’s role as chief information and technology officer at Nine has been made redundant as a result of a merger between its product engineering and product management teams.
Commercial mix modelling (CMM) platform Prophet has appointed Hamish Mogan to the role of COO and VP of marketing science.
He joins Prophet after five years at Meta’s Facebook, where he headed up Marketing Science for the Retail and e-Commerce sectors across Australia and New Zealand. He has also held leading Data Science and Analytics roles at companies such as Sportsbet, EY, and Les Mills.
Chairman and ARN CEO, Ciaran Davis, confirmed the appointment on Thursday. Young will commence her role at CRA on 7 August, 2024.
The Hit Network head of Hit Metro content and Fox content director, Amanda Lee, has made three new appointments to The Fox.
Brad Wood is joining The Fox as afternoon announcer and operations manager. Gemma Prendergast joins The Fox as new senior producer for the Breakfast show Fifi, Fev & Nick.
The new content assistant for The Fox will be Emily Allen, who will also work across the Hit and Triple M networks. She was previously with ARN working as a promotion & event specialist at Chilli FM and LAFM.
Seven reporter Robert Ovadia ‘sacked’ after allegations of inappropriate behaviour. He said he was sacked after an internal investigation was conducted into allegations of inappropriate behaviour.
In an interview with The Australian, the Sydney-based crime reporter confirmed he had been fired after 23 years with the network. “Yes I’ve been sacked and there will be more to say about that in the appropriate forum at the appropriate time,” Ovadia told The Australian.
Gaven Morris has been appointed executive general manager of corporate affairs for the Commonwealth Bank Australia (CBA), commencing July 29.
Houston has promoted Gretel Maltabarow to managing director and Stacey Saunders to general manager.
After just shy of nine years, Claudine Hall is leaving her role as Are Media’s head of commercial marketing, brand partnerships and PR.
Seven Network has promoted Sean Power to director of news for Seven Sydney as Neil Warren steps aside from the role for family reasons.
Stepping up into the EP position for Sunrise vacated by Power is supervising producer Jake Lyle. His promotion comes after the recent appointment of broadcast and print journalist Holly Fallon as executive producer of Weekend Sunrise.