By: E&P Staff With Freedom Communications Inc. CEO Scott Flanders now on his way to head Playboy Enterprises, several names have emerged as successor atop the Orange County Register parent.
Among them is Burl Osborne, the former Dallas Morning News publisher and Associated Press chairman -- who already sits on Freedom's board of directors.
Playboy Enterprises announced Monday that Flanders, 52, was its new CEO, and that he had been elected to the board of directors.
Flanders had been Freedom's CEO and president for three years, coming to the newspaper chain from Columbia House Co. At Playboy, Flanders replaces Christie Hefner, daughter of the flagship magazine's founder, Hugh Hefner. She retired six months ago.
"This is a particularly exciting time to assume the role of CEO," Flanders said in a statement. "The evolution of the media industry and the global recession's effect on consumer spending intensify the need for a creative and effective business model. I look forward to working with Hugh Hefner, David and the employee team to take Playboy to the next level."
Flanders assumes the Playboy position July 1.
The new CEO at Freedom will face a daunting task from day one -- restructure the publisher's $700 million in debt. The company disclosed last October that it was in technical default of its loan covenants. In April, it said it had received a waiver on those covenants until Dec. 31, 2009.
A recent Standard & Poor's Ratings Services assessment said Freedom had enough cash on hand to meet its loan payments this year, which it said amount to about $61 million.
In her blog on the flagship O.C. Register's Web site, business reporter Mary Ann Milbourn wrote that Flanders's successor could, like Osborne, come from the present board of directors. She notes that Flanders was a board member when he was named CEO.
"None of the four family members on the board has the media experience to run the company, but at least one independent director has been in the news business a half century, including 15 years running a major metropolitan paper," she wrote.
Osborne, 71, was a longtime AP reporter who became The Dallas Morning News' executive editor in 1980, and publisher in 1986. He left the paper in 2001. An AP board members cine 1993, he was chairman of the news cooperative from 2002 to 2007.
Milbourn notes that there is another Freedom director with a print background, James J. Spanfeller.
Spanfeller was president of Ziff Davis Media Inc.'s consumer magazine group, and a former publisher of Inc. magazine. He is now CEO of Forbes.com.
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