Business

GUCCIONE JR. GOES FROM PENTHOUSE TO THE OUTHOUSE

BOB Guccione Jr. is out as the chief executive officer of Discover Media, after what one source described as a falling-out over philosophical differences with his financial backers about how to run the company.

Guccione took over the magazine for less than $20 million in October 2005, with backing from Sandler Capital Management and Waller Sutton.

The plan at the time, aside from turning around the flagship magazine – which was launched in the mid-1980s by Time Inc. – was to grow the company through acquisitions.

However, since Guccione came on the scene, that growth hasn’t materialized, and thanks to tighter credit markets, things aren’t likely to improve anytime soon.

Differences between Discover’s financial backers and Guccione began to surface six week ago, an insider said.

“It became apparent that they weren’t happy with him and he wasn’t happy with them,” said one source.

One possible source of contention was the company’s Internet strategy.

While most print companies are desperately trying to become multi-platform companies, Discover Media sold off its discover.com Web address to Discover Card for about $5 million.

Guccione is the son of Penthouse founder and former owner Bob Guccione Sr. The two had been estranged for years over the younger Guccione’s decision to keep Spin magazine alive when his father’s General Media began showing signs of financial stress.

In the early 1990s, the younger Guccione took control of Spin and in 1997 sold it for over $40 million, pocketing about $17 million personally. Three years ago, over the Christmas holidays, he made peace with his father, who was battling cancer and had lost the Penthouse empire, an East Side townhouse and an art collection.

Reached late yesterday about the latest turn in his publishing career at Discover, Guccione said, “I am staying on the board as chairman and I’ll remain an owner. I am optimistic about the company’s future.

“At the same time, I want to find another media company to turn around. I feel I’ve done 90 percent of what I set out to do to revitalize this magazine.”

Henry Donahue, Discover Media’s chief financial officer, is expected to take over day-to-day operations.

Guccione said that since he took over, newsstand sales grew to 117,000 copies per month, from 85,000 copies out of a total circulation of 716,000, and that ad sales were up 20 percent in the first nine months of the year.

Radio days

Brian Duffy, who exited as the editor of U.S. News & World Report back in April, has landed at National Public Radio as managing editor.

At the time of his departure from the Mort Zuckerman-owned magazine, Duffy insisted that he wanted to finish a long overdue book on spies in the Revolutionary War that he had under contract with Simon & Schuster.

He also worked with a former FBI agent to collaborate on the manuscript for a novel that is currently being shopped.

Duffy, who earlier worked at the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, had 16 years at the magazine. He was named editor in 2001.

Some believed his departure came because he could not bear to put the magazine through another round of cost-cutting that Zuckerman was demanding in a bid to staunch red ink at the troubled weekly.

Thanks to a $220 million grant left by the late McDonald’s heiress Joan Kroc, NPR has been on a hiring binge, pushing its overseas bureaus to 18 and staffing 18 domestic bureaus.

Duffy concedes that he has no radio experience.

“I’m learning everything from scratch,” he said. But he says the idea of picking topics is similar to what he was doing at the newsweekly.

An NPR spokeswoman said the managing editor position will be responsible for directing the daily editorial process of determining what news stories will be covered, how and by whom. The managing editor also leads NPR’s investigative reporting efforts.

Duffy, by the way, said he hasn’t finished writing the history book yet.

“It will be done next year for sure,” he told Media Ink.

New look

BusinessWeek on Friday unveils a sweeping redesign that Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler has been working on for the better part of 18 months.

Everything from the logo on the cover to the inside sections are being changed.

“We just closed our first page of the new redesign,” said Adler when reached early yesterday evening. “I think it is a very substantial redesign in the way the magazine is organized.”

The Upfront section will open with The Business Week and offer short summaries of the major events of the week. It will also offer news, but will not break out global news as a separate section.

The magazine for the first time will be organized so that it has a big feature well to run longer stories with more artwork. Rob Hunter, who was a senior editor of finance, has been promoted to assistant managing editor of features to oversee that department.

“Money Honey” Maria Bartiromo’s executive interviews will now run weekly instead of every other week.

Brian Bremner, who spent the past 12 years overseas, has been called home to become the news editor. He replaces Patricia Kranz, who bolted to the New York Times.

Jack and Suzy Welch’s column will be in the back of the book in the Opinion section, which will also now house Jon Fine’s media column and a new weekly section to be called Feedback.

Adler said the work was done by Boston-based Modernista in conjunction with Art Director Andrew Horton, who has been at the magazine since January.

keith.kelly@nypost.com