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ARIA recruits Shine Endemol CEO Mark Fennessey as awards creative director

The 30th anniversary of the ARIA awards will see its organisers and the Ten Network pull out the big guns, with Shine Endemol CEO, Mark Fennessy, recruited to oversee the music industry broadcast.

Mark

Mark Fennessy: creative director at the 2016 ARIA Awards

The awards show will again be broadcast on Ten with ARIA CEO, Dan Rosen, telling Mumbrella the show was hoping to build on its 2015 audience and will continue to push social channels.

“This year we are wanting to make the broadcast as big as it can possibly be, and we have appointed Mark Fennessy from Shine Endemol as the creative director,” Rosen said.

“Mark actually worked on some of the ARIAs in the ’90s so he was very keen to come back for its 30th. Mark has an incredible reputation, he is probably Australia’s leading TV producer.”

Rosen said that building the audience had been a slow process, but that the once-a-year show was heading in the right direction, particularly in the hard to capture youth demographic.

“Over the past few years the TV audience has been growing back again and we have been winning the 16-39 demographic, which is probably the harder demo to get to watch TV,” Rosen said. “We have also really grown the social base.”

Telstra will also continue its partnership with the awards for the third year, and Star World will broadcast the awards throughout Asia.

Last year’s broadcast saw an audience of 491,000 tune in, down on the previous year; however, crucially, for Ten and the ARIA’s the broadcast topped the target demos of viewers aged 16-39, with 152,000, while the red carpet attracted 136,000 within the demographic.

The awards have also pushed to builder a larger social awareness, with the most mentions of #ARIAS ever – with 109 million impressions around the world.

ARIA chairman, Sony Music Entertainment Australia and New Zealand, Denis Handlin, said the 30th anniversary of the awards would be its biggest ever.

“We are delighted to once again be working with our valued presenting partner, Telstra, to recognise artists that have captured the nation’s imagination, both in the past and in the present,” Handlin said.

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