The Next CEOs

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, May, 2001 by Cindy Gillis, Sarah Gonser

His training ground was Wenner Media where, as publisher of Men's Journal, his mandate was to reposition the under-performing men's magazine and increase its profitability. O'Malley helped the title shed its sports-and-fitness origins and expand into a men's general-interest magazine. The new formula worked--ad revenue at Men's Journal increased 55 percent, from $28 million in 1997 to $45 million in 1999. O'Malley led a similar rally as associate publisher at Rolling Stone: Ad revenues increased from $83 million in 1994 to $107 million in 1996.

THE CHALLENGE: O'Malley faces the challenge of working for a company that has publicly admitted that it's not meeting its U.K.-based parent company's revenue expectations. "If I were looking for a CEO, I wouldn't look at a guy who is instrumental in a company that has done as badly as they have done," says one investment banker. "It's not his fault, but he is tarred with that brush."

AL PERLMAN

PRESIDENT, BUSINESS MEDIA, ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA INC. Al Perlman, 48, has a reputation as a turn-around guy who can take a marginally successful magazine and transform it into a major revenue producer. For instance, under his guidance as senior vice president and publisher, revenue at Ziff's Interactive Week, which he launched in 1994, grew from $13 million in 1996, to $100.5 million in 2000.

His track record starts at CMP Publications, where, having risen through the ranks from his first job as editor in chief of Computer Systems News, he is recognized for engineering the about-face of the then-struggling Information Week to position it as one of the leading IT publications, and growing its revenues substantially.

While at CMP, Perlman also launched and guided Network Computing, Computer Reseller News, Communication Week, VARBusiness and Communications Week International. "At CMP Al competed every day with what many called "the big boys"--Ziff Davis and IDG. And he probably produced his magazines with fewer resources," says Ed Koller, president and CEO of executive search firm The Howard Sloan Koller Group. "His style is low-key, but he has killer instincts.

THE CHALLENGE: All eyes are now on Penman as he repositions Ziff's tech titles in a time when the economy is faltering and the dot-com fallout has new-economy titles floundering. His greatest challenge-- and one that will surely influence where he goes after Ziff--is whether Perlman, under CEO James D. Dunning Jr., "can turn this company into a hugely profitable company again," says one publishing executive. For the nine months ending December 31, 2000, the company reported revenue of $350.2 million, a 13 percent gain over 1999, but a $4 million profit loss for the same period. "Dunning got his investors to spend $770 million just for the magazines, and now Perlman is running the biggest unit of Ziff" Koller says. "That's a big challenge."

DANIEL J. RAMELLA

PRESIDENT AND COO, PENTON MEDIA INC. In a strange way, Daniel J. Ramella doesn't really belong on this list, say a dozen industry executives, investment bankers and recruiters interviewed for this article. Mainly because Ramella, Penton Media's president and COO, already operates as a CEO. And no one says it more forcefully than Penton CEO Tom Kemp. "I've worked with Dan for five years, in partnership," Kemp says. "He functions as a co-CEO with me now in leading Penton Media."