Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) CEO, Grant Blackley, has announced the appointment of Dave Cameron (pictured) as chief content officer.
The promotion comes after speculation that former Nova group program director Dean Buchanan was heading for the job.
Cameron, who has worked with SCA for 25 years, is currently SCA Melbourne general manager and was appointed as chief content officer following what SCA called an extensive local and global search for candidates.
In his role, Cameron will be responsible for overseeing and delivering strategic leadership and creative excellence for SCA’s key content initiatives across its 78 FM stations, 10 DAB+ radio stations, extended digital and associated on-demand content. He also joins SCA’s executive team.
SCA said Cameron’s expertise is as a specialist in content strategy, programming, premium talent management and development and leadership. In addition, he has an intimate knowledge and understanding of radio formats, audience and music research, branding and messaging, tactics, line-up and talent management and negotiation.
During his time at SCA, Cameron has been a four-time ACRA winning content and music director, spending 11 years programming Fox FM Melbourne and the national Hit Network, and a further six years as music director in Sydney. He has 23 years of programming experience with SCA, 17 of those in the two biggest audio markets of Sydney and Melbourne.
Cameron has led collaborative teams across SCA creative initiatives including large-scale live music festivals, talent development programs, multi-network original programming, including the recent Concert in the Clouds series, establishing listener VIP databases, relaunching SCA’s DAB+ formats, and mentoring some of SCA’s current content directors. He is currently completing a Masters of Business Administration with Technology specialisation at the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM, UNSW).
“During our extensive candidate selection process for this important role, we interviewed a number of quality candidates, searching for the right person to lead and develop our audio content needs. A key focus will be strong leadership capability, the ability to be highly collaborative and developing a centre of excellence in creative execution across the content needs of our organisation,” Blackley said.
“I couldn’t be more delighted that we have found that person within our own ranks in Dave. His knowledge of our business, his ability to drive innovation across our audio brands and the respect and admiration he has among our people have all been standouts in this rigorous process.
“Dave’s creative strength is highlighted by leading many of Australia’s most successful radio talent and shows towards ratings success through creative excellence and world-first ideas. He will be, I’m sure, an outstanding Chief Content Officer to help lead and nurture the best talent and across our audio brands into the future.”
Commenting on his new role, Cameron said: “There’s no better place to lead an already highly experienced and creative content team than SCA. Our talent and overall content line-up are world-class and I’m excited to help drive SCA’s content output to new levels of success in my new role. In the digital age, content is critical to our success and as the audio landscape continues to expand and diversify into new platforms, we will focus on innovation and creative content excellence to drive that growth and stamp our success.”
Cameron’s role is effective from 1 January 2020.