fbpx

There can be only one: Jane Hastings takes on newly created chief executive role at APN—UPDATED

APN is centralising management of its radio, publishing and digital business interests in New Zealand with the appointment of Jane Hastings in a redefined chief executive officer role.

Previously, the Kiwi arm of APN had dual chief executive roles, with Martin Simons being in charge of the publishing and digital side and Hastings holding the reins at TRN.

APN’s acquirement of Clear Channel’s stake in TRN earlier this year gave the conglomerate full ownership of the radio network, and this meant that Hastings continued in her capacity as the TRN chief executive, a position she has held since September 2012, under the APN umbrella.

Simons, who has worked for APN for over 40 years, has served as the chief executive for APN Media in New Zealand for eight years, a period during which he took charge of the newspaper and magazine publishing arms, and also managed APN’s digital business interests (a release says that he took particular interest in GrabOne, which APN acquired in 2012).

The newly created position will effectively function as a conflation of these two disparate roles and gives Hastings broader management responsibilities across APN’s offering in New Zealand.

This move renders the previous chief executive roles redundant and, as a result, Simons has also been shifted into a new role.  

“Following Jane’s appointment, Martin Simons, the chief executive officer of New Zealand Media, will step down from his current position to take up a trans-Tasman consultancy role,” said Michael Miller, the APN News and Media chief executive across the Australasian market.

In commenting on the decision to restructure and give the new role to Hastings, Miller said that this uniformity would make it easier for advertisers to incorporate their brand messages across the channels available at APN.

“This is about giving [clients] further options to run flexible, bespoke campaigns that can incorporate any or all of our New Zealand newspapers, radio stations and digital platforms,” he said.

Prior to moving into her new role, Hastings was involved in managing a slew of changes at several of TRN’s radio brands. At this stage it’s unclear how concentrated her continued involvement in these ongoing changes will be, but Hastings says the progress will not be slowed at all.

“There is a very strong executive team who run the business at TRN with me … [and] there is no chance of the pace changing. Every senior executive is responsible for driving the plan forward and I’m still across the business. This will be about development of even more opportunities,” she says.

Hastings also says that she is now looking forward to working with “the talent in the business … to build existing and new audiences” for APN’s brands.

About Author

Comments are closed.