ARN announce massive leadership restructure – new CFO, Duncan Campbell steps back
ARN has announced a leadership reshuffle, with a new CFO appointed, and the chief content officer stepping into a consulting and advisory role.
Alexis Poole has been appointed chief financial officer, effective March 1, 2025. Under her guidance, ARN’s current legal team will transition into the finance department, “consolidating key governance functions to enhance efficiency and decision-making.”
Poole has two decades of financial leadership experience, including as group CFO and CIO at Real Petfood Company, finance director for Reckitt ANZ Hygiene, and in key positions at Inghams Enterprises and Mars.
Poole
Lauren Joyce, currently chief strategy and connections officer, will take on the newly created role of chief audience and content officer, a role that will bring together the existing content team with the podcast, marketing, creative production, and communications teams, to “enable a holistic approach to attracting, retaining, and growing highly commercialisable audiences.”
Duncan Campbell, chief content officer for the past fifteen years, will move into a consulting and advisory role, and will “continue to play a key role at ARN, providing a seamless transition and maintaining continuity of expertise.”
Duncan Campbell
Angela Ewers, chief people officer, will expand her responsibilities to include oversight of the technology and project delivery teams alongside the people and culture team.
This follows the recent appointment of Michael Stephenson — who recently resigned as Nine’s chief sales officer — as the network’s chief operating officer, bringing together the existing commercial team with the digital product, and commercial operations teams to “create a unified function accountable for developing and leading the delivery of ARN’s All Audio customer strategy for metro and national clients.”
As part of the restructure, the chief commercial officer role, held by Pete Whitehead, will no longer exist – Whithead will remain in the business until Michael Stephenson assumes the COO role on March 20. Fayad Tohme, chief digital and technology officer will also leave the company.
Lauren Joyce
Ciaran Davis, ARN’s chief, and managing director said the changes are “the result of careful planning to position ARN for long-term success in the evolving audio industry.”
“By streamlining processes, leveraging technology, and simplifying our structure, we’re ensuring ARN is agile and well-positioned to capitalise on emerging trends so that we can maintain our leadership in the audio entertainment industry.”
ARN’s new operating model takes effect on February 1, 2025.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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This network is elite at mistreating people. ARN-Australian Redundancy Network.
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The old “let’s move them to a consultancy role” aint going to work this time.
The KIIS FM Melbourne debacle is hurting shareholders now and it’s on;y going to get worse.
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There really is no obvious graceful exit strategy for KIIS in Melbourne now and any aspirations of rolling out K&JO Nationally, in primetime, seem dead in the water!
As another poster eluded to, there is a high likelihood that many more staff will now be sacked, at the network, to fund substantial SMT & K&JO salaries, a meagre dividend to the major shareholders, while also trying to pay off a significant amount of debt. Sadly, once any fat is cut from the cap city sites, the Regional stations will inevitably be next.
With the ‘live & local’ mantra being severely tested, I suspect.
Wouldn’t it be hilarious to see a reinvigorated SCA, freed of the shackles of its FTA TV liabilities, put in a hostile takeover bid for ARN now.
More market consolidation is going to happen, but I no longer view ARN as being in the box seat thanks to some (imho) very poor programming decisions over the last few years.
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When will the CEO take ownership for the mistakes made here? Seriously, the Kyle and Jackie O deal was a huge mistake but the people responsible are still employed? I would be getting out while I can, and I know people throughout the company are doing just that.
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Next week’s headline “ARN Makes all Staff Redundant Except for Kyle and Jackie”
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Just to clarify hasn’t Lauren Joyce and Angela Ewers been on the executive during this debacle
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I’m I mistaken or hasn’t Lauren Joyce and Angela Ewers been on the exec team during the current 200 million shareholder loss debacle – elite at underperformance being rewarded – sooo ARN
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