Consumer mag vet to lead Billboard

A three-month search to find a new editor-in-chief of Billboard ended Monday when Guggenheim co-president Janice Min announced she had raided a consumer-magazine veteran from Hearst for the post.

Tony Gervino was executive editor of Hearst Magazines International, where he was involved with a wide number of company-owned international editions at Esquire, Veranda, Seventeen and other titles.

Gervino is the second editor with a big consumer background hired by Min.

Previously, she hired Hugo Lindgren, the recently deposed editor of the New York Times Magazine, to be the acting editor of The Hollywood Reporter.

Gervino succeeds Bill Werde, a trade veteran, who was shown the door in early January after five years in the top post. The change atop Billboard comes at a time of big upheaval inside Guggenheim Media, owned by investment firm Guggenheim Partners, which also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dick Clark Productions, among other holdings.

Gervino nosed out music-industry veteran Joe Levy, who had been serving as acting editor for the past three months and has now been given the title of editor-at-large.

Levy will return to writing full time.

The latest move seems to suggest Min’s push to break Billboard from its mooring as a well-recognized trade publication in an industry that has gone through tremendous upheaval into one with more buzz and wider appeal to the consumer world.

Min has been spending money with the idea of building something bigger and glitzier, one source noted. “Even if it doesn’t work, it gives Guggenheim a lot of soft power in the Hollywood and entertainment worlds.”