John is a seasoned radio & research professional with over 40 years of rich experience in the media industry, primarily focusing on radio.
In August 2022, John was appointed as the first Head of Research for Commercial Radio & Audio after spending 18 years as the Head of Research for Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), Australia’s largest radio Network. These first few years in this role has seen John play a lead role in the development and introduction of new audio audience measurement with GfK, specifically the introduction of Radio360 as the new Australian metropolitan radio’s currency for radio surveys.
John’s career has been split into two distinct parts. The first half of his career was as a Sales person where he honed his skills and understanding of the media & advertising industries. From the beginning John had a passion to learn about audience behaviours and how audio worked inside the mind of it’s audiences. This audience focussed approach to sales led to many years of building successful sales teams for a variety of Networks across both metropolitan and regional markets in Australia.
Success as a Sales Director led to his appointment as the General Manager of 4BC in Brisbane during the 1980’s before deciding sales was still his passion and moving back into Sales Director roles.
In 2000 John’s career pivoted to focus on research when appointed as a manager for Nielsen Media Research, then the currency survey providers for Australian radio. His work and success in this role then led to John being appointed as one of the first ‘Heads of Research’ in an Australian Radio Network when he joined Southern Cross Austereo in this role in 2004.
Under his guidance the SCA research grew from a team of one to a team of over 20 as it expanded its scope to cover all facets of the networks operations – corporate, sales, marketing, and content.
The SCA research team provided a broad range of end-to-end research services, and pioneered innovative methodologies in online music research, audience insight communities and sales research. His work in this area was recognized globally, earning SCA a ‘Business Transformation’ Award for their efforts with in building one of the largest media Insight Communities in the world.