Rick Hess is the newly minted Propaganda president. He was most recently head of production at Phoenix Pictures.

Hess replaces former Propaganda president/COO Jim Taubre, who left amid a flurry of departures in the company's top executive ranks over the past several months.

Taubre and Steve Golin (co-founder /former chairman) have formed a new Los Angeles production management company called 8Media.

Steve Dickstein, former head of Propaganda's commercial division is now executive producer at the commercial division of European/bicoastal Partizan Entertainment.

Tim Clawson, former head of production, is now president/executive producer of New York-based Shooting Gallery

Productions. And Jeff Armstrong, who resigned as executive producer at Satellite (a subsidiary of Propaganda) mid-September, is seeking to form his own commercial label.

"Right now, I'm negotiating the financial end of it, but what I want to do is start in Los Angeles and New York and open symbiotic, reciprocal relationships with companies around the world," explains Armstrong from New York. "I love the idea of creating a commercial production company that is riotous, where there's no second guessing, back stabbing or Monday morning quarterbacking."

Armstrong, who was executive producer at Satellite for three years, decided not to renew his contract. He is one of the most recent executives to leave the Propaganda group.

Propaganda and Satellite, companies that have risen to the top rung of commercial producers, have changed ownership several times in the past seven years.

Founded by Steve Golin and Joni Sighvatsson in 1986, Propaganda was sold to PolyGram in 1992. PolyGram used it as a channel for feature development until the beginning of 1999, when Philips, PolyGram's parent company, sold PolyGram to Universal Studios. By April, Universal had put Propaganda up for sale.

Propaganda was purchased from Universal Studios in May by a group of investors, some of whom now sit on the board of directors. These investors include Gary Beer, CEO of Smithsonian Business Ventures, Winston Churchill of SCP Private Equity Partners and cable entrepreneur Jack Crosby.

Armstrong says Universal sold Propaganda's feature production division to Barry Diller, the chairman and CEO of USA Networks. The other pieces of the company, including the talent management, commercials and music video entities were sold to SCP.

Hess, who will share top management duties with COO Trevor Macy, is expected to steer the company back towards feature production, an area abandoned when Propaganda was purchased by Universal.

Sighvatsson, who left the company in 1994, is now owner of Palomar Pictures, Los Angeles.

"I think they (current Propaganda owners) took a very hard-nosed approach and I think they are finding it's a different business," says Sighvatsson.

He adds that the purchase of commercial production companies by corporate entities outside of the commercials business is a growing trend.