At the Mumbrella360 conference, radioinfo’s Steve Ahern asked the new CEO of Southern Cross Austereo this question.

At radioinfo we talk to the many hundreds of radio performers all around the country, especially in your regional stations. They’re feeling quite disrupted and nervous. They’ve been through redundancies, mergers, un-mergers, executive changes and yet they turn up every day and connect with the audiences and deliver for the advertisers.

What’s your message for them?

Rohan Lund, a Triple M listener, replied:

Thanks, Steve. Good question.

I spent quite a bit of time sitting over with the radio business, and I completely agree with you, they do a wonderful job. They do care about their audiences and advertisers, I feel that’s in the business.

I can see from the margins that’s a category of industry that’s really paid attention to its sustainability and profitability. And I can see they’ve gone through a lot of pain on that front. But, what I would say is, that’s just the nature of business.

I think we need to be careful when we think about media as something separate to the rest of business or the world.

You know, Amazon’s still one of the fastest growing companies in the world, and they let go 30,000 people. We see that across all of the world’s growth businesses too. There’s a natural resetting of your cost base, responding to cyclical conditions.

It’s hard and it’s awful when that happens, but I can definitely see radio has gone through it more than anyone else in media. It would have been hard, but there’s definitely an energy amongst the team. When I was talking to them, they feel very confident, and they can see that by getting their cost base in order, it’s actually unleashed them a bit too, as an organisation, for those that are still there.

In our business, I’ll be looking at the cost base. I don’t want to hide from that, and I’ve told staff that one of the things I’ll focus on is resetting the cost base… I don’t want to ever do anything that will compromise what we deliver to our audiences [or] to our advertising partners, but in the middle there’s a lot of duplication, there’s a lot of inefficiency that exists, as it does in all businesses. I think it would be naive and complacent if we didn’t expend our attention on that. Everyone in the room, every CMO, every medium, every business you talk to over this next cycle will tell you that’s just business.  

Lund was speaking at a keynote chat with Mumbrella publisher Tim Burrowes. In that chat he also revealed:

On the question of editorial influence from powerful people or advertisers he said he would consider whether the complaint had an economic basis. If it did he would handle it, if it didn’t, he not interfere in the editorial content. He says the company doesn’t focus on the top end of town, but on ordinary people.

“Our teams are deeply passionate about bringing the country together. They believe the way to do that is to talk and hear the little voices as well [as the powerful voices]. It doesn’t mean you don’t listen to the both, and you let both sides be heard, but we’re doing it for the middle voice, the middle listener.”

On merging two cultures:

“They’re very different cultures… I’m trying to find a way where it’s okay to have different cultures. We have different parts about business, but there’s got to be a common thread that actually makes them still have something that brings us together. I’m feeling more confident I can now see what that is, that just comes from a bit of time, getting to talk to people.

Lund says he has an official office at the Seven headquarters but also hot desks in the SCA radio building and other offices.

The organisation:

“I’m a business person, I think about the business side of it. Seeing people who care so deeply, it’s a nice reminder that that’s actually what we’re doing.”

He doesn’t think media businesses are ready for horizontal structures.

“I think TV, Radio, Publishing are very different businesses. They have different customer strategies, different cultures, so for me, I start with seeing managing directors of those three businesses and making sure they’re quite self-sufficient. I then like quite a lean corporate that sits around that.”

“I’m a very people lead, so culture is how I execute strategies. People & Culture, Finance, Technology, and then Commercial.

“I want a sales director for TV, a sales director for audio… then I want to make sure they’re all working together and we’re looking beyond their own platforms. What are we doing beyond what we do today.”

He anticipates having about 7 people in the leadership structure across TV, audio, publishing media verticals.  

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