Media Central, the radio sales house has won the tender to supply and manage advertising sales to Communicorp, the Denis O’Brien-owned radio group.
Media Central, which is headed up by Gavin Deans was already the sales house for the Communicorp-owned radio stations 98FM, Spin 1038 and Spin SouthWest. It also sells advertising on behalf of independent stations Beat 102-103, iRadio and 4FM.
In winning the tender to supply advertising sales, Media Central found itself up against CommunicorpOne, the in-house sales team that managed advertising sales for Today FM and Newstalk. Around 20 staff working for CommunicorpOne will now move to Media Central. The newly enlarged offering from Media Central will begin trading from August onwards.
Since it was set up several years ago, Media Central has scooped numerous awards, including Sales Team of the Year at the Media Awards 2016 and has developed a wide range of innovative advertising solutions for clients.
The move follows some restructuring within Communicorp which saw the abolition of the chief executive roles across the group’s different Irish stations. Instead, senior management at the stations will report directly to Adrian Serle, Communicorp’s CEO who joined the group in December 2017.
In addition, Communicorp announced earlier this week that each station within the group would no longer have a separate news editor. Instead, one group head of news will be appointed in the near future. It is understood that existing news editors are being invited to apply for the newly created role.
Communicorp has also signalled its intention to appoint a new head of creative partnerships who will be tasked with helping the various radio stations develop new complementary revenue streams in areas like digital.
