Building the Best Team: How Mediacom Navigated a Year of Transition

This story was originally featured in CFX: The Magazine‘s latest Top Ops issue, where Mediacom was awarded as the Tier-1 Operator of the Year. To read the full magazine, check out the digital edition here or visit the Top Ops website. 

In 2025, CFX opted not to name a Tier 1 Operator of the Year due to the state of flux companies were in—from management changes to major acquisitions and strategic overhauls. A year later, the landscape hasn’t settled. But one MSO stood out from the crowd, not just for what it’s done but also for where it’s headed. Mediacom has been an industry leader in DOCSIS 4.0 deployments and symmetrical speeds, and it’s steadily building up its mobile business—all while navigating the most significant leadership transition in its history.

The industry was shocked and saddened when Mediacom CEO and Founder Rocco B. Commisso passed away in January. But the company Mediacom moved forward, with his son Giuseppe B. Commisso stepping into the Chairman & CEO role. The changes aren’t just at the top, though. Some of Mediacom’s longtime leaders who got the business off the ground alongside Rocco are now entering retirement. It has presented Giuseppe with an opportunity to bring in some new blood and promote from within to build on the legacy of his father.

“From 1996 to 2001, my father led our company through an aggressive acquisition phase that truly established Mediacom as one of the industry’s leading cable operators. However, since that time, our geographic footprint has largely stayed the same,” says Giuseppe. “What has really changed over the past 25 years is all the consolidation that has happened around us. We are increasingly in competition with national companies that possess massive scale and resources. Mediacom has an ability to be more creative and fast-acting than those big companies, and we must use that to our advantage.”

In other words, Mediacom may be CFX’s Tier 1 Operator of the Year, but it’s not content. Giuseppe made a bold move in June, hiring former Comcast and Astound exec Toni Murphy as EVP, Operations, replacing John Pascarelli who retired after nearly three decades with the company.

“This is the first time that this company has gone through such massive change, and my story and my career has been all about transformation,” says Murphy, who recently guided Astound through its pending jv with GFiber that is set to close later this year. “When the opportunity presented itself, that was one of the things that appealed to me. Mediacom is one of the best companies out there, one of the only large independents left. I’ve been in this industry over 20 years, and there is something really important about companies like Mediacom having staying power and continuing to grow in this really evolving landscape.”

Mediacom employees turn out in force for a breast cancer awareness walk, reflecting the company’s commitment to the communities where it operates.

Murphy isn’t the only new face at Mediacom. The departures run deep: CFO Mark Stephan (28 years, and the first employee Rocco ever hired), Pascarelli (28 years), General Counsel Joseph Young (23 years), SVP of Operations, Product Strategy & Consumer Experience Tapan Dandnaik (21 years), SVP and Corporate Controller Julien Dancona (25 years), SVP, Programming Barry Paden (24 years) and SVP of Customer Service Jon Coscia (19 years) are all moving on. Some seats are being filled from outside the company; others are going to Mediacom veterans stepping up, like Jack Griffin, who became CFO in 2024, Glenn Goldsmith, who moved into the SVP, Programming role that same year, and Tom Larsen, who became SVP, General Counsel last year.

Murphy brought in her former Comcast colleague and ex-Amazon customer service leader Troy Griffin as SVP, Customer Operations and Customer Experience and hired Anthony Bowling, who has held senior roles at Comcast, Charter and Dish, to serve as SVP, Field Operations Strategy & Operational Excellence.

In her first month on the job, she called at least five customers a day to hear their perspectives. She visited with workers across Mediacom’s 22-state footprint, looking for their input and buy-in for the operator’s next chapter. She’s looking to shake things up.

Murphy’s approach is to pair the depth and breadth of Mediacom’s network with an outstanding customer experience. “Whether the customer is taking 300 megs or 2 gigs, or if a customer has fiber, coax or fixed wireless, what ultimately matters is that the experience they purchased is the experience they’re getting,” she says. “Something Giuseppe has said that I think is really important is he’s talked a lot about how we have to earn our customers back. We have to build customer trust, we have to be reliable. We have to make sure the network is working the way we intended and that price points are fair to the customer. I think we’re going to be at the forefront of that conversation.”

Mediacom brings its Xtream and Mediacom Mobile brands directly to the community, staffing booths at local events across its footprint.

That same appetite for moving fast shows up in the network. Mediacom’s launch of DOCSIS 4.0 with live residential customers in Moline, Illinois, in September 2025 was an industry milestone. The roll out—which began on one node with 14 customers—has expanded across its Quad Cities service area with more than a thousand nodes. “Before I retire, I hope to leave the Mediacom networks, not just monitorable, but I think the untold story on this next generation of amplifiers and actives is the management capabilities,” CTO JR Walden said at SCTE TechExpo 25. “It’s really going to allow us to absorb a lot of significant but unavoidable things that happen in a network in real time and not have the customer affected.”

Mediacom wasn’t first out the gate with mobile, but it’s been steadily growing the business since its 2024 launch of an MVNO with Verizon. It’s focusing on the value provided, plus the ability to offload traffic. And it hasn’t forgotten video, being among the first to sign up for Charter and Comcast’s Xumo Stream Box. “We’re constantly talking to potential partners about how to maintain a video experience in the consumer household, but it may not be the Mediacom video experience. It might be a partner video experience that we help sell or we help the consumer connect to through our broadband services,” says Larsen.

All of it points to a company still finding its footing under new leadership—but moving with purpose. Larsen, who joined Mediacom in 2006, likens it to how Giuseppe approached the Italian soccer team Fiorentina, which is owned by the Commisso family.

“He realized that he needed a really good general manager for Fiorentina, and so he went out and hired one from the Premier League. He had that general manager go find a great coach, and then the general manager also went out and found a bunch of great players,” he says. “He’s really excited about this season because he feels like he’s got the combination of the front office coaches and players that can drive the team forward to victories. And I think he feels the same way about Mediacom—putting management, coaches and players in a place where they can win.”

Fast Facts

• Before assuming the role of Chairman/CEO of Mediacom, Giuseppe Commisso held various roles of increasing responsibility for nearly two decades, including GVP of Corporate Finance, Interim CEO and Vice Chairman.
• Mediacom offers discounted broadband for seniors, military members, first responders and low-income households, promoted directly at community events across its footprint.
• Mediacom debuted its live DOCSIS 4.0 customer deployment delivering symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds in Moline, Illinois, and showcased the feat at SCTE TechExpo 25.