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Posted 01/07/2024 10:03am  

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SCA sees departures,
Redundancies take their toll,
Future uncertain.

In partnership with
Salesforce

James Pedersen, Luke Parsons, Matt Dickson caught in carnage as cuts sweep SCA; Melanie Withnall to return to ABC

More details have emerged of the widespread layoffs at SCA which Mi3 understands have cut a swathe through the company’s podcasting, content, sales, creative services, marketing, corporate affairs and publicity ranks.

According to insiders, SCA's redundancy program had been quietly underway for several months and resignations had already started before last week’s bigger round of layoffs, which is understood to have triggered more resignations.

Chief marketing officer, Nikki Clarkson, was the most senior executive to have been made redundant last week in the company’s aggressive cost out program. It is now understood that the latest cuts also included Executive GM of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, James Pedersen.

According to insiders, an earlier round of cuts at the network's commercial content division, The Studio, also saw to the exits of National Head of Studio, Luke Parsons, and National Head of Creativity, Matt Dickson, in recent months. SCA would not confirm the cuts.

Others roles impacted by the cuts are said to span sales, podcasting, content, marketing and comms, include four from within 2Day's content team and multiple others from SCA's comms team.

Meanwhile, SCA's Head of News and Information, Melanie Withnall has resigned and will finish up on 2 August to return to the ABC after nearly three years at SCA. It comes as the company's de facto Head of Corporate Communications, Rochelle Burbury, is also understood to have resigned, with Third Avenue Consulting's contract with the network to conclude at the end of this month.

"Melanie has been a critical part of the SCA Content Leadership Team across the last 3 years and has made a huge impact in growing our news-led spoken word content output and finding new audiences to consume our premium content. Melanie is highly respected and valued not only by her direct team but right across our business. Melanie goes with our best wishes and blessing for career growth, and we’re excited to watch her continued leadership and impact roll out at the ABC," said SCA Chief Content Officer, Dave Cameron.

The cuts leave uncertainties across many teams within the SCA network, with insiders pointing to a lack of clarity as to how the marketing structure will look in future.

All of this comes at a moment of mass carnage in the broader Australian media landscape, following last week's reports of up to 200 jobs lost at Nine and 100-150 redundancies at Seven West Media, adding to dozens of redundancies reported at News Corp earlier in June.

The cuts come as news publishers stare down the loss of millions in annual payments from Meta made under the Federal Government's News Media Bargaining Code in 2021. It is estimated these were providing $70m in annual funding to news outlets in Australia. The decision has been blasted by the Government, which is taking a tough line against Meta's decision - Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland, labelling it "a dereliction of its commitment to the sustainability of Australian news media".

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