Of late, particularly in 2025, NOVA Entertainment CEO Peter Charlton, Smooth’s Head of Programming Peter Clay and Group Program Director Brendan Taylor have been able to bask in ratings success, while other major radio players ARN, SCA and Nine Entertainment have dealt with takeover bids, TV assets sales, redundancies, workplace culture reviews, and a so far underperforming highly paid duo’s show in Melbourne.
But there is an ongoing shadow being cast across Nova’s shining star – a two year audit by the ATO (Australian Tax Office). The audit is taking place after a failure to file more than 40 annual account statements with ASIC (The Australian Securities and Investments Commission) across the 15 years since Lachlan Murdoch first purchased an interest in DMG Radio Australia in 2009.
The ‘errors’ were discovered after current Chief Financial Officer Georgia Byrne joined Nova six years ago and conducted an internal review, according to the Australian Financial Review‘s Sam Buckingham-Jones (subscription required). Fixing the issue would have cost up to $6 million, so Nova applied to the Federal court with the argument that it was an honest mistake that the current and former directors and management should not be liable. Last month the court agreed, bringing the matter into the public domain.
Murdoch‘s company Illyria took over DMG Radio fully in 2012, and became Nova Entertainment in February 2014, around the same time that Murdoch was rumoured to be looking to offload the network. There are a number of companies in the Nova Entertainment group, which has caused the compliance complexity.
The way Nova is set up under Illyria means that the three Australian companies that hold Nova’s broadcast licenses are listed as operating in the UK, a legacy that goes back to when they were owned by British company DMG. NOVA Entertainment pays royalty fees for exclusive use agreements of the licences, along with a range of related-party loans and interest, making it hard to publicly gauge how much profit the Australian radio group actually earns. Those UK companies pay tax at the British 25 per cent rate, rather than the 30 per cent corporate tax rate in Australia. Post-tax amounts are distributed to Nova’s holding companies as dividends.
The publicly lodged accounts show the Nova group earning $187.8 million revenue and making $24.1 million profit in the 2024 calendar year, up from $185.9 million in revenue the previous year. The company has 440 employees, and paid $5.4 million in tax last year. There is no suggestion that Illyria or NOVA Entertainment executives have done anything illegal.
A spokesperson for Nova Entertainment has told radioinfo:
‘NOVA Entertainment takes its obligations seriously and is confident that its affairs are compliant with all relevant requirements and appropriately managed. As a private company we do not comment on our tax or audit arrangements.’
Nova’s rivals are public companies, so their annual accounts are available. The latest financial results for SCA reveal revenue of $209.7 million, ARN earnt $365.6 million and Nine reported revenue of $2,619.4 million ($2.6 Billion) across its total radio, tv, digital and publishing assets.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for radioinfo.