Audience, Information Heads Roll in Australian TV Cull

Australian broadcasting groups Seven and Nine have announced substantial job cuts, including redundancies for Nine's Chief Information and Technology Officer Memo Hayek and Seven West Media's Chief Marketing and Audience Officer Melissa Hopkins.

Seven is reported to be looking for $100m in savings due to a challenging advertising market and the end of the group's multi-million dollar news media deal with Meta. News site www.mumbrella.com.au reported that up to 200 jobs are to go within the week at Nine, with Nine Entertainment CEO Mike Sneesby notifying staff and also attributing the moves to 'the loss of revenue from the Meta deal and challenges in the advertising market'. In Nine's case, the first redundancies will be in the publishing division, and in news and current affairs, with a review of Digital and Broadcast businesses to come.

The departures of Hayek and Hopkins were both announced on Wednesday. Nine is merging its Product Engineering and Product Management teams into a newly formed Product & Technology organisation, and Chief Digital Officer Alex Parsons told Mumbrella, 'regrettably as part of the re-alignment, Memo's role has been made redundant'. Hayek held the role for sixteen months, having previously spent around nine years at Commonwealth Bank, in CIO and related roles.

Hopkins, who joined from Optus in December 2022, has 'made a significant difference to the way Seven takes itself to market and how we talk to both viewers and advertisers', according to CEO Jeff Howard.