Guggenheim Partners, which owns The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, with Dick Clark Productions, the Golden Globes and the American Music Awards, is expected to announce on Wednesday that Ms. Min will become co-president and chief creative officer. John Amato, formerly chief executive of The Backstage, a newspaper and website aimed at actors, will be co-president and will lead business efforts at Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter.
Lovingly or mockingly called “the bible” by music executives, Billboard has been the music industry’s steadfast trade paper for decades, outlasting all rivals and setting the terms for success through its still closely watched charts. But as the music industry has been cut in half in the last decade, Billboard has shrunk, churning through editors and losing circulation.
In a telephone interview, Ms. Min, 44, said she was aware of the challenges that Billboard and the industry it covers were confronting, but said she believed that the publication could find traction through a more visually arresting presentation and broader coverage.
“Music is one of the most powerful mediums around,” she said. “Billboard, because of its charts and coverage, has the credibility and authority to access great stories and the people who are making news. It’s the music industry after all — we should be able to have some fun with that.”
It is a formula that worked at The Hollywood Reporter, which Ms. Min took over in 2010, after a successful tenure at Us Weekly. Although she faced doubts about her task, she created a weekly magazine built on lush visuals and in-depth treatment of the machinations of Hollywood. The magazine covers became sought-after real estate, with film and television stars happy to pose for a magazine that is read in the canyons and on the studio lots of Los Angeles.
Despite a relatively stable circulation of 72,360, the magazine has not been a source of profit, but The Hollywood Reporter’s website attracted 11.89 million unique visitors last November, up from 9.24 million in November 2012, according to the tracking service comScore.
The success of the magazine and the website has been less about conquering the entertainment news beat than capturing the Hollywood zeitgeist with its covers. Its round tables of entertainment luminaries have drawn attention. And what had been a dowdy also-ran in Hollywood now hosts a robust schedule of events and parties.
Billboard is still the most authoritative voice covering the music world, although it has struggled to reinvent itself as tumult in the music industry has reduced its pool of traditional subscribers. Its average circulation for the first half of 2013 was 16,524 copies, according to BPA Worldwide, after declining steadily since the 1990s, when it reached about 40,000.
Its website has remained one of the most popular music publications online, driven by music news and Billboard’s charts. Over the last year the site received an average of 3.3 million visitors a month in the United States, according to comScore, putting it slightly behind Rolling Stone but ahead of music outlets like Pitchfork and Spin.
To adapt to the changing music industry, Billboard has expanded its coverage into the periphery of technology, advertising and branding — the source of more and more of the money in music since sales have plunged. It has also developed an extensive business in industry conferences, and licenses its name to various businesses, including a concert hall in Tokyo.
Its charts have also adapted to changes in how music is consumed. Last year, it began to incorporate YouTube in the way it compiles the Hot 100, its standard pop singles chart.
“What we are really trying to achieve is platform maximization,” Todd Boehly, the president of Guggenheim Partners, said in an interview. “We would have the print, we would have the digital and it would be my goal that we would have other forms of distribution over the next several years.”
The changes at Billboard are part of an effort to expand the company’s footprint in live award events built on well-known media products — the Billboard Music Awards, the Golden Globes and the American Music Awards all continue to draw — at time when broadcast television is struggling to attract audiences in real time.
Guggenheim, whose principals have an interest in the Los Angeles Dodgers, is seeking to buy or build entertainment assets that live on multiple platforms.
In addition to expanding the role of Ms. Min, who will be responsible for the editorial direction of Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter, the company announced that its Prometheus Global Media group would be split into two groups: an entertainment group consisting of Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter and The Madison Avenue Group, made up of Adweek, the Clios, the annual advertising awards, and Film Expo.
Asked about changes in staff at Billboard, Ms. Min pointed out that most of the employees who were at The Hollywood Reporter when she took over remained there.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/business/media/new-leader-at-billboard-sees-future-in-visuals.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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