Hollywood Reporter hires Kim Masters

The Hollywood Reporter's new editorial director, Janice Min, has made her first hire -- well-known reporter Kim Masters, who will become editor-at-large for the entertainment business paper.

Masters, who has had stints as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Time and also was a reporter at the Washington Post, most recently was writing for Tina Brown's Daily Beast website. She is also host of "The Business," a radio show about the industry on KCRW.

At the Hollywood Reporter, Masters will report to Min, not to the paper's editor, Elizabeth Guider. Min is expected to make several more hires in the weeks ahead as she remakes the daily trade paper into a more broadly focused weekly magazine that she hopes will appeal to both industry insiders and the entertainment-obsessed public. The Hollywood Reporter will shift much of its news coverage to its website, and the magazine will ideally show readers the forest through the trees and the weeds.

Although the title editor-at-large often implies a contributing writer working under contract and not a full-time staffer, Masters said in an e-mail that she is going to be on staff and work at the paper's Wilshire Boulevard headquarters. She said that between the gig at the Hollywood Reporter and her radio show, she will likely be "far too busy" for other freelance work.

Besides Vanity Fair and the Daily Beast, Masters has also written for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and is author of "The Keys to the Kingdom: The Rise of Michael Eisner and the Fall of Everybody Else" and co-wrote with Nancy Griffin "Hit & Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood."

-- Joe Flint

Related:

A dramatic makeover for the Hollywood Reporter

Photo: Kim Masters. Credit: Marc Goldstein.

Report: Advertising weak through September

The U.S. advertising market could not shake its doldrums -- at least not through the first nine months of the year.

Advertising tracker TNS Media Intelligence this morning said that advertising sales plummeted 14.7% during the first nine months of this year, compared to the same period in 2008.

The top 10 advertisers, according to TNS, spent a combined total of $11.75 billion for the first three quarters of the year -- a 5.9% decrease compared to the same period last year. Procter & Gamble Co., Verizon Communications Inc., General Motors Corp., AT&T Inc. and Johnson & Johnson were the leading advertisers, with each company spending over $1 billion from January through September. 

However, two-thirds of the top 100 advertisers cut their advertising budgets this year.

Magazines, newspapers and radio stations experienced the steepest declines -- the second straight year of bad news for the denizens of "old media." Broadcast television networks saw sales tumble by 11.5% for the first three quarters of the year -- and a whopping 25% during the third quarter of 2009.  Network television faced difficult comparisons because commercial sales were catapulted during third quarter of 2008 by the Summer Olympics. Cable television networks, meanwhile, experienced only a 2.9% decline -- "a much stronger performance than the TV sector as a whole," the TNS report found.

Internet display advertising perked up 7%, boosted by the campaigns of telephone companies, the travel industry and auto advertisers.

TV network executives say fourth-quarter advertising spending has been more robust than earlier in the year, although this quarter was not covered by the TNS survey. Industry watchers say holiday retail sales should determine the strength of the advertising market going into next year.

"The timing, strength and durability of an advertising recovery will ultimately be determined by the way consumer activity rebounds," Jon Swallen, TNS senior vice president for research, said in a statement contained in the report.

-- Meg James

Bloomberg buys BusinessWeek [Updated]

Michael Bloomberg has found one more thing to stick his name on.

The media mogul and mayor of New York has acquired BusinessWeek from McGraw Hill. The deal combines two of the biggest names in business journalism, although in some ways it seems an odd fit. Bloomberg is about the future. He delivers his news online and through his subscription terminals, while BusinessWeek is an old-school magazine.

But it still has a brand name that apparently is worth between $2 million and $5 million in cash along with assumed liabilities. At least that's what BusinessWeek's website reported the price to be, and in theory it should at least be in the ballpark. Both Bloomberg and McGraw-Hill declined to comment on the financial terms.

The deal marks a shift for Bloomberg, which is known primarily for its subscription news service for financial professionals, into the consumer media space. In a statement, company President Daniel L. Doctoroff said BusinessWeek print and online content will be integrated with Bloomberg's subscription news terminals, as well as its Web, television and mobile properties. The New York Times reported that the magazine will be renamed Bloomberg's BusinessWeek. No word yet on whether Bloomberg will also try to regulate salt consumption among the staff. (As mayor, Bloomberg has expressed concern about salt as well as other dietary issues.)

Doctoroff didn't comment on further plans for the magazine. In a sign of dedication to the print property, however. Bloomberg appointed its chief content officer, Norman Pearlstine, the former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal and editor in chief of Time Inc., as chairman of BusinessWeek. 

According to BusinessWeek, the magazine is projected to lose in excess of $40 million this year on revenue of about $130 million. McGraw Hill decided to put the magazine up for sale in the summer. Other potential suitors looking at BusinessWeek before Bloomberg made its offer included ZelnickMedia, the investment firm run by Take-Two Interactive chief executive and former 20th Century Fox president Strauss Zelnick, in combination with former Wall Street Journal publisher L. Gordon Crovitz and private equity firm OpenGate, which owns TV Guide Magazine.

It's not yet clear whether Bloomberg will institute major layoffs at BusinessWeek once the deal closes. Several staffers have already left the magazine recently amid uncertainty over its future.

Updated at 5:20 p.m.: Bloomberg is committed to the print magazine and hopes the BusinessWeek brand will help it sell more terminals, Pearlstine told The Times in an interview.

"This deal goes both ways," he said. "On the one hand, it makes our content more valuable for terminal subscribers, and on the other hand it enables us to leverage our assets with consumers."

Pearlstine confirmed that the magazine will likely be renamed Bloomberg BusinessWeek and said that, despite the huge challenges in print media, his company is committed to continuing publication.

"BusinessWeek has got a very talented staff, but has been resource-constrained over the last few years because it's a magazine in a very tough market," he said. "We can marry that asset to the 2,200 journalists of Bloomberg News in 145 offices in 72 countries, and that's going to enable us to create a weekly that we’re going to invest in and make a great magazine reflecting the strength of the entire staff of Bloomberg."

Pearlstine said that BusinessWeek will retain some of its own editorial staff but declined to speculate on whether there will be significant layoffs.

-- Ben Fritz

Photo: Copies of BusinessWeek magazine. Credit: Daniel Acker / Bloomberg.