PT takes charge: Change at the top of Nine after a short but successful stint for West

Sep 25, 2025

Welcome to a Thursday edition of Unmade. Today, Nine makes a smart (and predictable) choice for its new board chair.

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Tonagh on top

Compared to last time, this transition was smooth.

When Peter Costello was forced to resign as chair of Nine 15 months ago, it came five days after he barged a journalist from The Australian to the floor in a confrontation at Canberra Airport.

This time, Catherine West’s short period as chair of Australia’s biggest locally listed media company will end more gracefully, on November 7 at Nine’s annual general meeting.

Her successor is no great surprise. Peter Tonagh is well credentialled, and when he joined the Nine board in January, it looked likely it wouldn’t be merely for a director seat. He’d just resigned as deputy chair of the ABC.

We predicted Tonagh’s elevation in January

West’s departing comments were notably less hubristic than those of Costello. The biggest achievement for West, and not a small one, is that she steadied the ship.

When she took the chair in June last year after Costello’s forced resignation, it was when Nine’s woes were at their worst. The newsroom culture scandal had broken and then CEO Mike Sneesby was a lame duck - the market had begun to recognise that he had failed to develop any sort of strategy to take the company forward.

Since then, West and her board have appointed a new CEO in Matt Stanton, landed the findings of its culture review and aftermath, and sold Domain to Costar. All three things happened smoothly.

Now it will be down to PT, as he’s widely known in the industry, to take Nine forward.

Most relevant is Tonagh’s TV experience. He spent 11 years with Foxtel, in two stints. That equips him well to understand the dynamics of sports rights bargaining.

Tonagh and Stanton’s leadership of Nine will be defined by the next NRL rights deal. Nine currently holds the free to air rights, while Foxtel has the pay rights. The current $2bn, five-year deal runs until 2027.

Nine must retain the free to air rights at almost any cost. But the bigger decision will be whether to compete with DAZN’s Foxtel and others for the pay rights for Stan.

That single decision will likely shape Nine’s entire business.

Just as culturally important for Australia will be what happens to Nine’s publishing arm, particularly the Australian Financial Review, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Again PT is well qualified to take a view. Between his two stints at Foxtel, he spent more than two years at News Corp, including as CEO for the last few months. Although nobody would accuse him of having ink in his veins, that was enough time for Tonagh to gain an understanding of the difficult economics of the publishing industry.

And more recently, Tonagh has also gained an additional string to his bow - as chair of data company Quantium. That’s the world Nine plays in now.

The appointment creates a fascinating dynamic between the three big beasts - Nine, News Corp and Seven West Media. News Corp’s Michael Miller worked alongside Tonagh as executive chair to PT as CEO, and as boss to Seven’s now CEO Jeff Howard when both of them worked at what is now ARN Media. At a time when the industry needs to unite against platform foes, finding common ground is crucial.

For an industry that does not always choose chairs with deep media experience, this is as experienced a top table as we’ve seen in some years.