Nine’s Helen McCabe steps back from digital content director role to focus on Future Women
Nine digital content director Helen McCabe will be stepping back from her current role with a view to focus on the business’ Future Women offering.
In an announcement to staff, McCabe said she was ‘in the process of moving out’ of her current role.
McCabe will still be in Nine’s Pyrmont offices, but will be less visible as she changes her focus to building the Future Women memberships and events portfolio.
The announcement to staff pegs Nine Digital editorial director Kerri Elstub to take over the digital content director duties.
McCabe joined Nine in 2016 as the head of lifestyle, as the company revamped its digital offering nine.com.au. Prior to that she spent seven years at the helm of Bauer’s Australian Women’s Weekly.
Earlier this year the Nielsen Digital Content Ratings showed 9Honey had grown to be the number one lifestyle platform in Australia for the month of February, overtaking News Corp’s Whimn. Nine.com.au regularly takes the second spot in the overall DCR ratings behind news.com.au.
Future Women was announced at the Nine upfronts in 2017 alongside a revamp of the 9Honey platform. Billed as a ‘premier women’s lifestyle site’, the offering was championed by McCabe who said at the time that the content would be unlike anything else in the market.
“What we are actually doing in premium is an online subscription business which is Future Women, which is around content that is probably not in this market at the moment. It’ll have its own team, its own head, its own editor, its own business model and it’s around corporate professional women,” said McCabe.
“There’ll be events, there’ll be research, there’ll be a data play, there’ll probably be exclusive and high end events. There’ll be some workshops and it’s really around identifying that professional women are very busy.”
So how is that premium online subscription service for women with content that doesn’t exist anywhere else actually going? My prediction is that Nine will soon cut it adrift, just as they are doing with all businesses in their portfolio that don’t fit with their core (news and entertainment) proposition and/or are not making a meaningful revenue contribution to the wider business. My guess is that Future Women ticks both these boxes.
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