After that ceremony ARIA withdrew their support for the "Countdown" awards. Meanwhile four music industry representatives had met in Sydney: a talent manager Peter Rix and three record company executives Brian Harris, Peter Ikin and Gil Robert. Rix summarised the outcome, "the industry deserved a peer-voting Awards night and it needed to be sanctioned by" ARIA. Its "primary purpose was to strive for some sort of objective overview of excellence in recording." Rather than the ARIA board pay the entire cost of the event, "we cooked up a scheme whereby the ARIA Awards would be funded by individual record companies buying tickets for a dinner." Rix and his group approached ARIA board members, Paul Turner (also managing director of WEA) and Brian Smith (BMG's managining director) then-chairperson of ARIA. After several months of arguing for the change, Rix was appointed chair of "a committee to convene the inaugural ARIA Awards."