Richard “Mad Dog” Beckman’s job may wind up on the cutting room floor.
Beckman is seeing his CEO role at The Hollywood Reporter and other trade magazines getting crimped while day-to-day operations at the parent company, Prometheus Global Media, are being taken over by Chairman Jimmy Finkelstein.
Some speculate that the new assignment revealed in an internal memo by Beckman to his top executives yesterday is the beginning of an exit plan that will result in Beckman’s departure several months down the road.
Finkelstein and Beckman both insist that he is not exiting but acknowledge his job is changing as he heads up a newly formed division focused on “branded entertainment” for “several months.”
One insider said, “He [Beckman] is getting diminished, but he is not being pushed out.”
And Finkelstein said, “Richard is the CEO and will remain the CEO.” But another source speculated, “There is no branded entertainment deal to be done. Certainly not at a level which would be meaningful or CEO-worthy. He will exit formally in a respectable period.”
In the internal memo to about 20 high-ranking executives at the company, Beckman said he was “going to create a new division of Prometheus that will focus entirely on our brand development globally as well as building a world-class branded entertainment unit. To this end, for the next few months, I have asked our chairman, Jimmy, to lend support to me in the day-to-day running of Prometheus to enable us to build out this very high-potential segment of our business.”
Beckman, a former publisher of Vogue and president of the Condé Nast Media group, was recruited by Finkelstein and Guggenheim partner Todd Boehly to be the CEO of Prometheus Global Media in early 2010, shortly after their takeover of the trade magazines Adweek, Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter for $70 million from Nielsen Business Media in late 2009.