DailyDOOH

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

It seems only yesterday when we wrote it’s the ‘End Of The Line For Tim Bleakley‘ when he abruptly left CBS Outdoor but obviously friends in high places helps immensely when looking for that next position as it was announced Thursday that he has been appointed CEO Ocean Outdoor – Ocean Outdoor is of course chaired by Tom Goddard the former Chief Executive of CBS Outdoor’s International division!

Tim Bleakley was, until 2009, joint UK Managing Director and Managing Director, Sales and Marketing at CBS Outdoor Ltd. (prior to this, he was Broadcast Director and Executive Board Member at EMAP Advertising and Managing Director at Talksport Radio).

Commenting on the appointment, Bob Garvin told us “I am delighted with the appointment of Tim Bleakley as CEO. Tim has an excellent understanding of the outdoor media business and will bring a wealth of experience to the role, which will underpin Ocean’s leading position in the super premium sector.”

New CEO Tim Bleakley, obviously pleased to have a job now was quoted as saying “This is a fantastic opportunity to build on the next phase of growth for Ocean Outdoor. Their premium iconic assets are second to none and are making a huge impact on the UK outdoor media landscape, it’s an exhilarating time to be joining the team and maximizing the growth potential in the run up to 2012 and beyond”.

Ocean Outdoor has done more than anyone in the UK to push digital and courtesy no doubt of Smedvig Capital Ltd. has spent intelligently AND (importantly) spent very well on digital as a medium.

Whether they need at the helm any more of the old skool types who have done little but keep the existing OOH cartel intact in the UK over many, many years is another question. Mind you, Tom’s approach to digital out of home seems to be “don’t rock the boat” – Andrew Oldham who was appointed CEO on an interim basis back in January 2010 and who was doing 3 days a week was also ex CBS Outdoor of course.

Either way, and in fact just like with Digicom, they (Ocean Outdoor) are certainly piling on the overhead – we’d imagine it’s all part of the grooming to get to market around 2012 when they will still have Westfield and revenues should be peaking!

Let’s hope the private equity folks are keeping a close eye on all of these CBS appointments though.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 00:54 @079 and is filed under DailyDOOH Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.