Everyone from Vice President Joe Biden to Jimmy Kimmel, to Jimmy Fallon, the “Tonight Show” host-in-waiting, were on hand last night at Jazz at Lincoln Center for the annual Time 100 event.
One of the hottest tables at the affair was one featuring Biden dining with Justin Timberlake, Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel, Jessica Biel and Fallon.
Just feet away, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes was chowing down with Time Executive Editor Radhika Jones, Stephen Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis, actor Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her hubby , astronaut Mark Kelly.
Kelly used his moment in the limelight to praise Christina Taylor Green, who was born on 9/11 and died in the assassination attempt on Gifford. He said of the 9-year-old, “She made a difference, and so should we all.”
David Koch, one of the conservative billionaire brothers who heads Koch Industries, made Time’s list in 2011 — and is weighing a bid for the Tribune newspaper empire that controls the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. He was invited back as a past attendee.
Sandra Lee, star of the Food Network — and the girlfriend of Gov. Andrew Cuomo — was there without her significant other. But she did have some family friends to keep her company, with new CNN anchor Chris Cuomo in the house.
The tech people were there in force as well — as Yahoo! CEO Marissa Meyer rubbed elbows with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram, Perry Chen, founder of Kickstarter, and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt.
Media Ink’s Keith J. Kelly, not on Time’s list, was seated with 2011 list-maker Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua and Richard Cook, one of the NASA brains behind the Mars Rover.
Chua said she has a new book coming out in January. “It will be an educational book,” she said, but added that she could not reveal the title.
One of the more popular daytime television talk-show figures, Dr. Mehmet Oz, was in attendance, as was the embattled “Today” show co-host Matt Lauer. Oz is in discussions with Hearst Corp. to form a joint venture to publish an eponymous magazine to launch later this year. “We’re still talking,” Oz said. “I’m optimistic.”
Oprah Winfrey pal Gayle King walked by just then. “She’s been very helpful in advising me,” said Oz. He called Hearst “the Boy Scouts of publishing.”
More Time talk
The looming spinoff of Time Inc. from Time Warner has made the magazine publisher a constant topic of fascination to the chattering media elites.
At the Time 100 gathering, Bewkes said he could not say when a CEO would be named at Time Inc. Asked if “before the summer” was still the target, he said it is difficult to predict and refused to be pinned down: “Personnel things are always hard to predict.”
The latest name to have been rumored to be in the mix for the Time Inc. CEO job is Richard Bressler, currently a managing partner at the private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners.
Bressler’s name surfaced earlier this week in a dispatch in The Delaney Report, although a source close to Bressler insisted the report was mere speculation.
And when Bewkes was asked if Bressler was in the mix, he answered with a simple “No.”
Media Ink reported last week that American Media CEO David Pecker had interviewed for the job.
At the Time event, Stengel said be wanted to thank Bewkes for his stewardship. “We’ll be back here next year as an independent company. And Jeff,” he went on to joke, “the only way you will be back is if you’re on the list yourself.”
Circus Maxim
Cerberus and Credit Suisse will have a hard time earning back their investment in Maxim and its parent company, Alpha Media, which is now being shopped.
Sources said that the books of key financial data that just began circulating show revenue of just over $40 million and a loss of about $5 million last year.
The always optimistic projections predict losses will decline to several million this year and that digital and licensing deals will flourish.
Its ad pages have continued to drop, down 24.1 percent through March to only 80.6 pages, according to Media Industry Newsletter.
Its monster parties at the Super Bowl are barely break-even events, one source said.
Felix Dennis, the British publishing maverick, had sold the company for almost $250 million in 2007 — but within two years the new owners, Quadrangle, had shut down sister titles Blender and Stuff and defaulted on its $100 million-plus in loans from Cerberus, Credit Suisse and other lenders, who then became its reluctant shareholders.
One bright spot, Maxim, actually counts a huge number of digital- replica editions — 259,529 — making it among the strongest digital- replica sales in the industry.