Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia CEO Lisa Gersh is expected to announce her resignation, possibly as early as this week, just five months after she was elevated to the top job.
The struggling company is said to be weighing a new strategy in an attempt to transform itself into one more focused on merchandising across a range of products.
For months, there also has been talk of tension between Gersh, an experienced media executive, and the company’s namesake founder and chief creative officer.
Stewart was said to crave broad television exposure and was upset in January when the Hallmark Channel ended her daily talk show.
Gersh worked out deals with Hulu and AOL to distribute new and archived clips from Stewart’s TV shows, but her only program currently airing on television is “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School” on PBS.
Sources said that the company hired a headhunting firm a month ago to scout for a new chief executive more attuned to a new strategy of selling Martha-branded merchandise and less attached to the media side that was Gersh’s strength.
A company spokeswoman declined to comment.
In recent weeks, the company has been pruning its publishing portfolio to concentrate on its main title, Martha Stewart Living, and the spinoff, Martha Stewart Weddings.
The company recently shuttered money-losing Whole Living after failing to find a buyer and is folding recipe magazine Everyday Food into its flagship publication. The moves resulted in 70 layoffs.
MSLO ended talks to sell Whole Living to OpenGate Capital because the venture-capital firm said it would require too much investment to make the 750,000-circulation magazine profitable.
The title was believed to be losing $4 million to $5 million a year.
The company, which had initially hoped to become profitable again by year-end, has pushed that off until some point in the future. It has posted a profit only once in the last nine years.
With a background in TV, Gersh joined MSLO as president and chief operating officer in June 2011. Six months into her stint, Hallmark said it was dropping Stewart and replacing her with Marie Osmond because the show was said to be losing money.
Last year, the company hired the Blackstone Group to help it explore “strategic opportunities,” in what some thought was a step toward selling the company.
Meanwhile, the company is embroiled in a court battle with Macy’s, which has sued MSLO for breach of contract after it struck a merchandising deal with rival department store chain JCPenney.