Ziff Davis Media, publisher of technology-oriented magazine titles such as PC Magazine, Yahoo! Internet Life and Interactive Week, announced on Monday it had removed president, CEO and chairman James Dunning in the face of plummeting ad sales.
Dunning will be replaced on a temporary basis by Avy Stein, a member of Ziff Davis Media's board of directors and founding partner of Willis Stein & Partners, which acquired Ziff Davis Publishing from Ziff Davis Inc. in April 2000 for $780 million.
Ziff Davis has hired recruitment firm SpencerStuart to search for a permanent replacement.
Last week, Ziff Davis Media reported a 37 percent decline in revenue from $125.6 million to $78.9 million for the quarter ended June 30, from the same period last year. Cash earnings, or earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) fell 89 percent in the period, from $32.4 million to $3.5 million. This was attributed to a 47.5 percent decline in advertising pages over the same period.
Several Ziff Davis titles have been hit hard by the year-long advertising slump, which has afflicted not only the technology advertising sector, but the real estate, media and retail sectors as well.
Ziff Davis's top title, PC Magazine, sold 23.7 percent fewer ad pages in the first six months of 2001 compared to the same period last year, according to the Publishers' Information Bureau. Yahoo! Internet Life was down 37 percent in the same period and Family PC dropped 42.8 percent.
Dunning was ousted just as he embarked on a restructuring program that included shutting down Family PC and reducing the company1s workforce by 23 percent.
Despite the troubled times, Stein threw his support behind recent launches such as CIO Insight, ExtremeTech and PCMag.com and said that the company would not seek buyers for any of its magazines.
