Business

Wolff is at the door

Michael Wolff’s reign at Adweek is nearing an end.

Jimmy Finkelstein — one of the investors who took over the trade magazine group of Adweek, The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard — has been sounding out industry sources for weeks in the hunt for Wolff’s replacement, but it’s unclear whether Finkelstein has zeroed in on a particular candidate.

After weeks of speculation that he was on his way out, insiders now say even Wolff seems to believe that Finkelstein will move to ax him soon.

Sources said Finkelstein is upset that Adweek’s move to become a big-picture magazine rather than a traditional trade publication has fallen far short of expectations.

Todd Boehly, a managing partner at investment firm Guggenheim, which put up much of the $70 million that was used to buy the magazines from Nielsen Business Media in December 2009, appears less worried.

Boehly is said to have traveled the world in recent weeks with Richard Beckman, the CEO of Prometheus Global Media, the parent of Adweek, Billboard and other magazines.

Apparently inspired by the success of the Billboard Music Awards and its ABC TV special, Boehly and Beckman hope to replicate it on an international scale and have been globe-trotting from Brazil to Dubai.

They are hoping that the world of venture-capital funds — which seem flush with cash even as the rest of the financial world is shaky — might be lured to invest in a new venture, which would be built around Billboard and Back Stage, a trade aimed at actors. But it now looks like it will be financed without any new money from Finkelstein, who also owns Washington publication The Hill.

Sources say he wants to put the brakes on any new ventures until he’s assured the old one is working — and getting rid of Wolff is part of his agenda.

Finkelstein made his big killing when he sold a group of legal trade magazines started by his father to Steve Brill in the late 1980s.

Faced with complaints from Madison Avenue executives concerning Wolff’s redesign this spring, Finkelstein wants to return Adweek to its more traditional roots, insiders say.

Wolff is Exhibit A in what Finkelstein feels is the failed strategy hatched by Beckman, who is still listed as the CEO even though most of his duties have been taken over by Finkelstein.

Adweek Publisher Erica Bartman, one of the hires made by Beckman from the Condé Nast fold shortly after he began in early 2010, may also be feeling the heat. Ads, which picked up initially after the redesign, have fallen off drastically.

Wolff is scheduled to speak at several events that are part of New York City’s annual Advertising Week, which kicks off Monday. That day also marks the one-year anniversary of Wolff’s hiring.

Among those Finkelstein is said to have eyed are past top editors at Adweek and those at more established rival Ad Age, owned by Crain Communications.

The biggest impediment to change may be that Finkelstein has yet to persuade someone to say ‘yes.”

Beckman, Finkelstein and Wolff did not return calls seeking comment.

Edgy AMI

American Media appears to be back on the financial edge of the knife. The publisher is instituting unpaid furloughs, amounting to about a half month’s pay, for staffers at the National Enquirer.

AMI CEO David Pecker warned people weeks ago that he was going to cut salaries by as much as 20 percent at the company flagship.

Based on that, one source insisted that the unpaid furlough was not as bad as feared.

Still, already shaky morale appears to have plunged after plans for the 13-day furlough was revealed.

The unpaid leave must be taken before the end of the next fiscal year on March 31 and amount to about a 5 percent pay cut.

Earlier this week five lower-level staffers from the Boca Raton, Fla. headquarters were fired.

“It is not an atmosphere that inspires a lot of trust in the company,” said one source, who noted the furlough comes less than a year after staffers were assured that the company was in great shape upon emerging from a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy last fall.

To make matters even more perplexing, staffers are being forced to take unpaid leave after AMI purchased the troubled US edition of OK! from Richard Desmond in a joint venture with newsstand kingpin Jimmy Cohen for about $20 million — money that some sources now think would have been better spent saving the workforce from cuts and stagnant salaries.

“Most of the staff has not had a substantial raise in years,” said one source.

The cuts were not applied equally across AMI’s stable of publications but were focused on the National Enquirer as well as two other supermarket tabloids, The Globe and the Examiner.

Star Magazine, which experienced staff cutbacks several months ago, was spared the ax this time as were mags Muscle & Fitness and Men’s Fitness.

The tabloids were said to have been singled out because of their dismal circulation numbers, a problem that has plagued most of the titles in the marketplace throughout the year.

Pecker is clearly under pressure to deliver results.

One source said he overestimated earnings for the current year, promising private-equity firms Angelo Gordon and Avenue Capital and other investors that he would churn out cash flow between $118 million and $122 million this fiscal year on revenue that is running less than $400 million a year.

That earnings target is looking increasingly more difficult to reach and the guidance could be lowered in the near future, said the source.

15 CPW

Best-selling author Michael Gross, who wrote “740 Park” chronicling the intrigues inside the posh address that is home to private-equity heavyweight Henry Kravis, billionaire Ron Perelman and Blackstone chief Steve Schwarzman, is going to apply the same treatment to his next book about an equally tony address: 15 Central Park West.

He’s jumping from Random House to Simon & Schuster’s Free Press for the new tome, which will cover the place that former Citibank head Sandy Weill, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, actors Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez, Hollywood producer Norman Lear and others have called home.

“Real estate has been very good to me,” said Gross. “The books use real estate to tell a larger story. It’s a great means to a larger end.”

The latest book was handled by Dan Stone at Trident and is believe to have fetched a mid-six figure advance.

Gross declined to comment on the size of the advance but said he was paid “enough” to spend a year researching and writing the book, which is expected to hit shelves (and e-readers) sometime in 2013.

His soon-to-be-released “Unreal Estate: Money, Ambition and the Lust for Land in Los Angeles” hits from the Broadway imprint of Random House in mid-November.