RSSVicki Masseria is the New President of Ascend Media…I read it on a blog…
I come back from a meeting and am delighted to find a comment on my blog. If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m pretty enthusiastic about this B2B media space we operate in and love talking about it with anyone who will listen. But this comment wasn’t a comment at all. It was the in-house announcement heralding the end of the Cam Bishop era and the beginning of the Vicki Masseria era at Ascend Media.
First, I’m not very surprised at this announcement. Things have been unraveling at Ascend since early in the year when new drug launch advertising slowed down and the pipeline didn’t look promising. Then the dental group continued to struggle. By early May, the Stagnito food group, one of the most successful divisions of the company was quietly for sale. And then it was sold. Along with EXPO magazine. And then three pubs were shuttered. And now this: Bishop out, Masseria in.
(Technically, Bishop is staying on as chairman. This company was built by him, Ron Wall, and an often bickering group of finance guys, one side from VSS and the other from CCMP Capital. From what I know, Cam sweats for Ascend. So I don’t question his dedication to the project. But my guess is this move is not a promotion. The reasons? If I had to guess, I would guess these: 1. The company is not performing well, at least in part due to market conditions; 2. It is very hard work working with–and between–competing and antagonistic teams of PE guys…it wore down on him; 3. Due to both 1 and 2, the company is not headed towards where Bishop wanted it to go when he formed it all those years ago…and that can take the wind out of your sails. More on this in this week’s issue of min’s b2b.)
But what interests me most about this at this point is that it was effectively announced as a comment on my blog. And not on the most current story, but the last story I wrote about Ascend. Is this new?
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As a former Atwood Convention Publishing pioneer - which incidentally formed the foundation of Ascend Media et all - and following the Ascend Media trail with anticipation, the new regime did not intimately understand the convention publishing dynamics. To this I can speak as a vivacious and limber bunch of dedicated souls. Over a handful of years, ‘limber’ no longer applied and this entire division went unresponsive to the changing needs of medical meetings: a VERY lucrative niche. Ascend will recapture lost business to Tristar by developing new online products and reviving customer service. My best to Vicki Masseria.