SCA’s Grant Blackley named CEO of the Year by MediaWeek

Southern Cross Austereo chief executive Grant Blackley has taken out MediaWeek’s prestigious CEO of the Year for 2019.

MediaWeek voters got behind Blackley, with editor James Manning pointing to his success managing SCA across radio, regional television and digital in a challenging year for media CEOs.

“SCA has a diverse set of assets in what has been a challenging market,” said Manning.

“SCA has had exposure to numerous markets across three different platforms of radio, TV and digital. Blackley is navigating the company in these market conditions.”

MediaWeek also pointed to the fact that SCA continues to own and operate 96 commercial radio stations, 12 DAB+ radio networks, 105 TV broadcast signals (with affiliation to both Nine and Seven), Australia’s PodcastOne platform along with a myriad of digital consumer product extensions.

It also employs 2,500 people across 65 offices, despite redundancies in late 2019.

Blackley was also hailed for the SCA-led Boomtown initiative, strengthening the network’s connection with regional audiences, as well as his deal with RedWave Media.

“SCA has in the last three years completed a number of critical activities including but not limited to a considerable reduction in company debt, rebranding of 76 radio stations, deployment of 10 new DAB radio networks, a change of TV affiliation to Nine, the sale of the Northern NSW TV assets, the sale of 43 transmission towers, along with the long term outsourcing of our TV playout and transmission services to specialist providers,” said Blackley.

Grant Blackley is also the chairman of Commercial Radio Australia and a director of Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA).

“Whilst the market has been challenging and difficult to navigate in recent times – SCA has continued to invest and develop new audio products evidenced by the success of PodcastOne,” Blackley added.

“Finally, SCA has been hard at work considering new products and investments which will be announced and released in the year ahead.

“These set of strategies are designed to ensure that SCA is stronger, fitter and capable of being curious and invest in new products and services both now and into the future.”