Ann-Maree Nolan, who worked for near three decades in radio and radio research across Austereo (now SCA), ARN, Nielsen Media and GfK, where she was Account Director for Radio, died on Good Friday after a long battle with cancer.

She said on LinkedIn of her love of radio ratings day:

“The adrenalin rush I get leading up to and on survey day, all the stations have a story to tell if you listen.”

Deb Hishon, Media Measurement Director / Head of Commercial ANZ for GfK, shared this tribute: 

I have known Annie, as well all knew her, for many years. She started with the Media division at Nielsen back in the early 2000’s, moved into the Radio Client Service Team in 2003 and has been an invaluable member of my team for over two decades, both at Nielsen and obviously more recently here at GfK for just shy of ten years.

She was such a support over so many years to me, and our wider team, always willing to lend a hand or an ear, very encouraging with a ‘can do’ attitude and always said yes to a spot of retail therapy! 

Radio was in Annie’s DNA. Her early career saw her start her love of the radio industry starting with 2CH, 2GB, sometime later at ARN and spent many years working at 2DAYFM, with the Wendy Harmer Morning Crew and Kyle and Jackie O before they were all the icons they are today…so many drama filled, hilarious stories she had of dealing with radio celebrities and so many deep friendships made with her colleagues then, and continued to make at Nielsen Media and here at GfK.

I often referred to Annie as our ‘engine room’.

Survey after survey she would wrangle data checking, reports, emails and distributions lists to ‘hit the red button’ time after time after time, never once failing at getting the data to our clients on time and to spec. The success we had over the years at keeping the industry so very happy with our delivery and industry training was testament to her absolute dedication to what she did. Her long running clients adored her, always sought her out for training sessions and were always so very happy to have chat which we all know she loved to do.

Annie insisted on working throughout her treatment and her family were very thankful for that, she was bright eyed, engaged with her clients, her team and her beloved radio industry right up to the end. Her work really kept her going and she absolutely loved it.  

For myself and my immediate team, this loss will be felt keenly and will take a while for us all to come to terms with the fact she is really gone.

We will miss her cat antics on Teams calls, her dirty jokes and quick wit, her positivity and support and her friendship. Come October we will miss our ACRA bingo, our red carpet photo shoots and the Hungry Jacks/Casino/Karaoke sessions afterwards with high heels in hand.

We will miss her steadfast assurances that the data is “good to go” and her updates on all things radio.

It’s hard to really believe she is gone.

Story courtesy of RadioInfo Australia