The Order of Australia is a means by which Australia recognises the outstanding service of its people to our country. The Order of Australia was established in 1975 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and is designed to define, encourage and reinforce Australian goals and values.
It is with great pleasure that we congratulate our client:
Mark Fennessy – Mark was awarded an Order of Australia recognising him for “Significant service to the broadcast media industry as an entrepreneur, innovator and production executive”
Starting out at HSV 7 in Melbourne Mark worked his way through both the 7 and 9 Networks before moving up to Sydney with Wide World of Sports. Following this time Mark became one of the Nine Networks “young gun” Executive Producers heading up MTV Australia. Mark’s credits throughout this time are extraordinary and too volumous to list here but they include ARIA Award’s, Carole’s By Candlelight, 5 x Olympic Games, Melbourne Cup Carnivals, AFL Grand Finals….the list literally goes on and on. He had achieved a huge amount at a very young age but inside himself he saw a future far bigger than most ever do….and he turned from Executive Producer to entrepreneur launching his own production label Crackerjack in 1992.
Crackerjack was a classic fledgling indie producer and it took Mark 13 years of sheer back breaking work to build it in to a genuine success story. In that time Mark lead the Australian charge in to the international TV market and he was at the forefront of the global non-scripted format explosion. All the while Mark was driving a young company with a work ethic and value system that became the envy of the Australian and international creative community. He was the best of the best – and leading the new generation of content creators and entrepreneurs.
In 2003 he sold Crackerjack to FremantleMedia, who merged it with Grundy Television and he was appointed CEO of FremantleMedia Australia. The success story at FMA was incredible and included the likes of The Biggest Loser, Australia’s Got Talent, Australian Idol and of course Masterchef. Then in 2009 Liz Murdoch asked Mark to launch Shine Australia with her – which he turned in to Australia’s most dynamic and successful production label in the space of just 18 months. It was nothing short of extraordinary and really quite breath taking what he achieved ….and all a result of his brilliance, tenacity, vision, creativity and unbridled will to succeed and go further, faster than anyone before him.
