Sling Media’s top execs sling out of the company

Much of the key management team at Sling Media is leaving the company, paidContent reports. Those on their way out include chief executive Blake Krikorian, senior vice president of business development Jason Krikorian, president Jason Hirschhorn, chief creative officer Ben White and vice president of sales Greg Wilkes.

Sling Media is widely known as the maker of Slingbox, a device that lets you access your recorded television content from anywhere in the world over the Internet.

With that many key people leaving, the first question is: Who’s in charge? Chief operating officer John Gilmore may be the guy, paidContent was told, but I’m not sure that’s official.

The second question is: Why such a mass exodus from the top all at once? “Now it’s time for the entrepreneurs to move on,” Hirschhorn told paidContent. He said the team wanted to see Sling Media through last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (and presumably Macworld), where the company unveiled some new products, such as a new DVR and a new iPhone app.

The timing also makes sense given EchoStar’s deal to buy Sling Media for $380 million in September 2007. As part of that deal, the top executive team agreed to remain in place for a year, paidContent notes.

Still, this comes at a time when Sling Media is working on some potentially exciting things. Aside from the Slingbox and the new iPhone app, the company just launched the Sling.com web video portal that competes with Hulu. Unfortunately, right now, it’s not as good as Hulu unless you love CBS content.

Blake Krikorian noted at the NewTeeVee Live event in November that winning the battle to control digital content in the living room against the big cable and satellite companies would be hard but that there was an opportunity because those guys are “asleep at the wheel.”

At least they’re still in the car.