"There are too many people sitting around waiting for this thing to happen and it’s just not going to happen in the near future," Dave Florence, CEO of Direct Media said Tuesday. "It just didn’t get high enough on the priority list. Neither of us had the time to dig into it."

The termination of the merger ends months of speculation and rumors about the status of the agreement.

The firms had planned to operate independently while sharing resources with a holding company overseeing the two businesses.

"Paradysz Matera is extremely focused on its core business and any distractions away from this right now is not something we want to pursue," said Chris Paradysz, the founder and CEO of New York-based Paradysz Matera. "Putting a deal like this together is very time-consuming."

Both Florence and Paradysz said their respective companies were doing well and continue to work together in a number of areas including online marketing and e-mail, international list brokerage and cooperative databases.

Paradysz, who had been named president of Direct Media shortly after the merger announcement, never officially assumed the post, Florence said.

Operations at Greenwich, CT-based Direct Media include: list management; private and cooperative B-to-B prospecting databases; a full-service international marketing agency; and a Canadian media and marketing service based in Toronto.

Paradysz Matera has developed proprietary, state-of-the-art analysis and research tools that support a brokerage operation for print, direct mail, digital and alternative media.

The companies have offices in New York, Greenwich, Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, Kansas City, New Jersey, Arkansas and Toronto.