Peter Charlton officially starts as NOVA Entertainment CEO

NOVA Entertainment’s new CEO, Peter Charlton, officially kicked off his new gig today.

He takes over from long-time leader Cathy O’Connor, who recently placed fourth on B&T’s Women In Media Power List. 

O’Connor moves on to become CEO of outdoor and content company oOh!media, which also owns youth publishing platform Junkee.

She takes the helm after a successful stint at NOVA Entertainment, but at a time the outdoor industry is suffering significantly from COVID-19 lockdowns, travel bans, a weak advertising market and the wider economic recession.

Figures today revealed that media agency spend on radio was back 27.3% year on year for the month of September, while outdoor was hit by a 62% drop. oOh!media is also contending with the loss of prominent airport billboards across Sydney.

Charlton was elevated from COO when O’Connor announced her departure.

At the time his appointment was announced, he noted the company had been through a difficult period.

“Australia media, and business generally, have had a tricky time. We all know that. Media businesses have been as affected as anybody, but we’ve refocused and adapted our business,” he told Radio Today. 

“We’ve done that as a group executive team throughout this difficult COVID period, and created a structure and a team for the future, and for the future as we see it.”

Throughout the pandemic, NOVA has scrapped local workdays across its Nova network in Brisbane and Adelaide, leading to some criticism from former talent about how the process was handled. In August, Radio Today revealed the company was letting approximately 70 people go. That redundancy round came after another restructure late last year, which also included multiple job losses.