Guggenheim Partners has taken full control of Prometheus Global Media — the owner of the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Adweek — after buying out co-investor Jimmy Finkelstein.
As part of the deal, Prometheus created a division called Guggenheim Digital Media. Guggenheim also tapped former top Yahoo! exec Ross Levinsohn as CEO, replacing Dottie Mattison. Levinsohn is the fourth executive to take the reins since Guggenheim and Finkelstein’s Pluribus Capital acquired the trade group for $70 million from Nielsen in 2009.
Finkelstein’s firm — which included former Hearst executive George Green and former Hollinger executive Matthew Doull — had an estimated 30 percent stake in Prometheus. Miraculously, they have managed to emerge from their problem-plagued company with a profit.
“We’re very happy,” said Green. “We came out more than whole. We made a profit.”
The newly revamped company has earmarked big bucks to make investments in the digital world.
“Guggenheim anticipates allocating significant capital to acquire and invest in new media companies,” the company said in a statement yesterday.
Allen Shapiro — the CEO of recent Guggenheim acquisition Dick Clark Productions, which produces the Golden Globe awards and “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” — is said to be involved in the new GDM.
A Guggenheim spokesman declined to comment on what role, if any, Shapiro will play, but the announcement yesterday said GDM will have a hand in developing the digital properties for Dick Clark Productions.
Insiders said Prometheus seemed directionless for several years. Until July, Richard “Mad Dog” Beckman, a former Condé Nast executive, held the CEO title, but in reality he had relinquished day-to-day control more than a year earlier.
The CEO duties were handled for a while by then-chairman Finkelstein and later by Mattison, a former Walmart executive with no media experience. As one insider said at the time, “It was beyond dysfunctional.”
When Beckman was officially booted in July, Mattison was named CEO even though she struggled to gain credibility with staff and advertisers.
Many of the changes made during the Beckman era, such as installing media critic Michael Wolff as editor of Adweek, ended disastrously.
Now Guggenheim is trying to refashion the business-to-business publishing company into a digital media company.
“This is a complete turnaround situation,” said one source familiar with the company. “The only thing Guggenheim brings is a big checkbook.
Men’s Ill Health
Perhaps mindful of his boss’ track record with past editors, Bill Phillips, the newly installed editor-in-chief of Rodale-owned Men’s Health, invited his new boss, Maria Rodale, to take a careful look at his first issue before it went out the door.
He may regret the move.
Once before in her career, Maria served as editorial director of Organic Style. She churned through five editors in four years before the magazine lost more than $10 million and was shuttered.
Insiders said he circulated a memo after the meeting, insisting that Maria loved the March issue but nevertheless wanted a laundry list of changes made — pronto.
Last month, Rodale lobbed a bomb at David Zinczenko, the high-profile former EIC of Men’s Health, as he was heading out the door following the nonrenewal of his million-dollar contract.
“It’s not Dave’s Health, it’s Men’s Health,” she sniped.
Among her list of changes to the March issue: Convert one of the inside feature covers for the Style Guide from color to black and white, while adding more color — specifically, sepia tone — to a sidebar in the Man to Man section. She also blasted headlines as “too thin and skimpy,” according to a memo Phillips sent to a handful of top editors and art directors there.
It’s unusual in publishing circles for the CEO to get involved in such minor editorial decisions — but not at Rodale, a family-owned company founded by Maria’s grandfather.
“Maria regards herself as the chief creative officer in the company,” said a source.
Phillips did not return a call.
Reached for comment, a Rodale spokesman insisted the suggested changes were minor and that Maria was in love with the first post-Zinczenko issue.
“The March issue of Men’s Health is fantastic — one of the best issues I’ve seen in years!” Maria said via the spokesman.
Time bomb?
Time Inc. and the Newspaper Guild of New York are getting ready to square off over a new contract covering editorial employees at titles including Time, People, Sports Illustrated and Fortune.
The current three-year pact expires on Jan. 31.
A Guild notice said the first meeting on a new contract is slated for Jan. 25 — only six days before the old contract expires.
CEO Laura Lang has issued a memo telling the company’s 8,000 employees they’re getting no merit pay hikes this year. Only a small fraction of the employees are covered by the Guild, but the battle lines already are getting drawn.
One person who won’t be waiting around to see how the union talks turn out is Joey Bartolomeo, who has gotten a lot of TV time as a senior writer covering celebrities for People on the West Coast. She’s jumping to Self, where she’ll be reunited with Editor-in-Chief Lucy Danziger. She starts tomorrow as new entertainment and features editor.
In making the hire, Danziger, president of theAmerican Society of Magazine Editors, raided the staff of ASME predecessor Larry Hackett, People managing editor.
“I e-mailed Larry and told him, ‘Don’t be mad,’” said Danziger. “He took it like the good-hearted and gracious person that he is.”