Ben Latimer has departed Nova Entertainment where he was joint head of programming for the Nova network.
Latimer’s departure is another shakeup for the business that less than 12 months ago had a major executive reshuffle after the departure of chief programming & music content officer Paul Jackson.
The announcement of Latimer’s departure came with the industry in a ratings break and was made just before the Easter long weekend.
Nova’s internal email about Ben Latimer
After nearly six years with the company, Ben Latimer is departing from his role as Head of Programming, Nova 96.9, Nova 919 and National Shows.
Ben initially joined us as Network Program Director for Smooth FM. Throughout his tenure, he took on various leadership positions within programming across NOVA in nearly every market. Most notably, Ben played a pivotal role in guiding Ben & Liam and Nova Adelaide to great success.
We thank Ben for all his achievements as he leaves an exceptionally talented on and off air team in place and wish him well for the future.
Brendan Taylor will take on responsibility for all Nova Programming until further notice.
Ben and Liam with Ben Latimer
It’s been a busy year for the normally very stable Nova breakfast teams. With #1 breakfast shows in Perth and Brisbane, Nova has shaken up its breakfast shows in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide.
In a comment about his departure from Nova Entertainment, Latimer told Mediaweek: “It’s been an amazing ride, but it’s time to try some new things.”
In 2017 Latimer first joined Nova Entertainment as smoothfm network program director as the Sydney and Melbourne stations were establishing themselves as major FM forces in Australia’s biggest radio markets. During this time the Sydney Nova 969 station posted major cume gains for the Fitzy and Wippa breakfast show.
In September 2019 Latimer was made head of programming for the Nova stations. The broadcaster subsequently signed Ben and Liam as Adelaide breakfast hosts. After a successful run in Adelaide, the team was expanded to Ben, Liam and Belle and given the role of hosting Melbourne breakfast after the station ended the run of Chrissie, Sam and Browny. Latimer was tasked with recruiting the new Nova Adelaide breakfast show with the roles going to broadcaster Jodie Oddy and sports journalist Andrew Hayes.
There was a bigger bombshell though that was dropped more recently on the 1m+ listeners of the Fitzy and Wippa Nova Sydney breakfast show when co-host Sarah McGilvray was replaced on the show by Kate Ritchie as she transitioned from drive to early mornings (sort of early with a 7am start) as she returned to radio after a break.
Always a fierce warrior in the radio battlefield, Latimer told Mediaweek’s Trent Thomas at the end of 2022 after the final survey release:
“We’ve got more listeners than any other metro network and remain as the only broadcast network with over six million cume, which is great. We continue to hold the number one overall cume from a network perspective, all people 10+, and people 25-54. The exciting thing today for us is being the only network to grow DAB+ audience, which was up 9%, that’s definitely great news. We launched local and live smooth announcers in Perth, Brisbane, and Adelaide in September, and they’re all number one outright which is fantastic in such a short period of time. That’s just a fantastic result and really demonstrates how that uniqueness and the music focus can cut through. Lots of room to grow there for sure.”
Nova Entertainment’s Peter Clay (left) with Luke Minto and Ben Latimer
Prior to Nova, Latimer spent five years with Foxtel as program director of the music channels, later moving to a role looking after on-demand content.
He started his career at ARN working initially on Adelaide news/talk station 5DN before moving to FM where Latimer was content director at Mix 102.3 where he helped launch Kym, Ali & Dzelde. Too valuable to remain in Adelaide, ARN whisked him away to Sydney where Latimer was EP of WSFM’s hit breakfast show Jonesy and Amanda for five years.
See also:
Fitzy & Wippa pay tribute to departing co-anchor, Sarah McGilvray