The Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel board of directors is looking for a successor to chairman and CEO Gary Forsee, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal reports that the search began quietly in August. The news, based on sources “familiar with the situation,” follows hard on the footsteps of a WSJ report about activist shareholder Ralph Whitworth’s loss of confidence in Forsee and his threat to wage a proxy battle for board seats unless the board “immediately” took action to replace Forsee. Whitworth’s Relational Investors owns roughly 1.9 percent of Sprint’s outstanding shares.

The company’s very name highlights some of the trouble. Meant to help consumer-focused Sprint and business-oriented Nextel best survive a consolidating industry, the 2005 merger has yet to produce the hoped-for results. Instead, the stock has lost nearly one-third of its value and the merged company has been overshadowed by AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ). At the same time, the company must grapple with a number of other problems, including what the Journal calls “reliance” on customers with poor credit. Changes implemented by Forsee in the past year have yet to pay off with happier investors. One “knowledgeable” person told the Journal the search began because the current CEO and his team weren’t making the numbers: “Everyone is just disappointed.’’

WSJ.com’s DealJournal has a list of possible replacements including Denny Strigl, president of Verizon Communications, and a “say what” candidate, NFL Network’s Steve Bornstein. The suggestion: “Sprint might want to think beyond the telco universe toward the hybridized media/entertainment/technology business that it and others are becoming.”