The National Readership Survey (NRS) has today announced the appointment of Simon Redican as its next chief executive.
Current CEO, Mike Ironside, is stepping down from the role at the end of June after five years in the post.
Redican is currently managing director of the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB), where he has spent the last seven years. Prior to that, he worked at Times Media as director of solutions, Classic FM, and a number of media agencies including Starcom MediaVest and Carat.
Under Ironside’s leadership the NRS has seen the marriage between traditional print surveys and online data to give publishers and advertisers a much fuller picture of readership across the nation, with the launch of NRS PADD a little over a year ago.
“Mike will be a very hard act to follow and has given the NRS five fantastic years of energy and commitment, for which we are all extremely grateful,” said Simon Marquis, chairman, NRS.
“I am very pleased that the board saw a host of exceptionally good candidates as a potential successor, of which Simon stood out. His broad media experience, many contacts in the business, his fantastic track record at RAB, and most of all his enthusiasm to take on the NRS role, make us both excited and relieved that we have found someone with exactly the right capabilities to take NRS forward.
“It is a truism to say these are challenging times, but they are, and NRS needs to respond ever more intelligently to the changing needs of its stakeholders.”
Simon Redican added: “I am delighted to be joining NRS as CEO. NRS rightly has a reputation as the press industry ‘gold standard’ and I relish the opportunity of building on the great work that Mike Ironside and the rest of the team have begun with NRS PADD.
“The organisation has a vital role to play as it continues to quantify and contextualise the exciting growth in consumption of publisher content across myriad digital platforms.”
