I love how companies spin it when someone is ousted from a company. In the case of Wizard Entertainment, they claim staffing changes have been made with Editor-in-Chief Pat McCallum parting ways with the company.
How nice of them to spin it that way. In a nutshell McCallum, a founding member of the magazine, was let go, fired, deep-sixed, or whatever other word you want to use to tell the tale.
According to Wizard president and COO Fred Pierce, “In an effort to grow the company and evolve with our customers, Wizard has made a number of aggressive changes over the past nine months. We have had a record year for both the publishing division and the Wizard World tours, and these staffing changes will ensure even greater success in 2007.”
Even with the loss of McCallum, wizard Entertainment has hired several new people for the publishing and Wizard World Tour divisions.
Recent additions to the company include; Marketing Director John Ko; General Manager Keith Patrick; General Manager for Dealer Relations Peter Katz; Programming Manager for Wizard Conventions Inc. Adam Dickstein; and Sales Account Executive Bart Sciarraba.
The Wizard World Tour has had its problems this year, with two staff members being fired (axed, eighty-sixed) after the Wizard Wolrd Chicago convention. Word on the street is the conventions had lower than expected attendance, while the magazine itself is experiencing dwindling sale figures.
via Wizard World Entertainment (link)
2 Comments
Hmm… I don’t know about anybody else, but for the last year or so, I’ve really felt that the magazine was floundering. From the completely useless and apparently made-up price guide (every alternate cover is either 8 bucks or 15), to the “We want desperately to be Maxim!” writing, I’m unsure what it is I’m going to be seeing each month.
One of the things that bugs me here is that McCallum was supposedly an old friend of publisher Shamus. When you get to the point where your buddies get thrown to the wolves, somebody’s at the point of panic.
Or, I could be reading too much into it, and McCallum is just some sort of schmuck. Who knows?
You are completely correct Matt. According to Newsarama or Comicbook Resources the circulation has dropped considerably, and as I mentioned in the article, Wizard World Chicago was disappointing. I think I saw one poster who said it was a failure – but I could be wrong.
As far as throwing friends to the wolves Matthew… I have some bad news for you… :) (joke).
Yeah, it is pretty bad when buddies “part ways” because things aren’t going right. I could tell you some stories of things I’ve seen happen at small start-ups I’ve been involved with.