Penske in driver’s seat in mag merger
WEDNESDAY’S merger of the publishers behind two rival Hollywood magazines — The Hollywood Reporter and Variety — was billed as a joint venture. But Media Ink has learned that Variety owner Penske Media Corp. (PMC) paid about $225 million to control 80 percent of the new entity, to be known as PMRC.
MRC, publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, will retain a roughly 20 percent stake, sources said.
The deal will now result in hefty layoffs among MRC’s non-editorial staffers. About 50 back-office workers, or 15 percent of the roughly 325 people who do accounting, human resources and other administrative work, are expected to be cut in the merger. At least one top executive is also headed for the exits, sources said. Deanna Brown, president of The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, is expected to say farewell after helping with a transition. She could not be reached for comment.
The editorial side is expected to come through relatively unscathed, however, with Hannah Karp remaining as editorial director of Billboard, Nekesa Mumbi Moody staying on as editor-in-chief at THR and Datwon Thomas remaining at the editorial helm of Vibe.
Even Claudia Eller — the Variety editor-in-chief who was forced to take a leave of absence in June after a column on the lack of racial diversity at the mag ignited a Twitter storm — might stay on. Sources close to the company say she has been undergoing diversity training and counseling and that Penske is mulling having her reinstated. At the time of her stormy exit, Penske did not name a permanent replacement, instead bringing back ex-EIC Cynthia Littleton to run the paper on an acting basis.
As The Post reported Wednesday, PMC CEO Jay Penske, son of auto-racing kingpin Roger Penske, will manage the newly combined company’s trade titles, the largest part of the operation. The merger joins Penske’s Variety, Rolling Stone and Music Business Worldwide together with MRC’s THR, Billboard and Vibe.
“It’s an upending of the whole editorial system out here,” said one entertainment-industry source about the prospects of rivals THR and Variety under the same corporate ownership.
MRC co-CEOs Asif Satchu and Modi Wiczyk will retain control of a studio business that produces TV shows, movies and videos. Sources said Penske hopes to have some of the journalism stories that appear in Rolling Stone and other properties get turned into long-form videos and movies by the studio side.
Penske’s PMC has long coveted THR, known for breaking salacious stories on Hollywood insiders, despite concerns that it’s been losing millions. Condé Nast was said to have tried to buy it in 2016, and Jimmy Finkelstein, owner of The Hill, reportedly circled THR two years later with a $100 million offer.
Penske came into the merger flush with cash thanks to a controversial $225 million infusion in 2018 from the Saudi Research and Marketing Group, a publicly traded company with close ties to the Saudi royal family, which took a passive 20 percent stake in PMC.
Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner may stay affiliated with the iconic magazine after his threeyear deal with Penske Media expires at the end of the year. That deal kept him on board as “editorial director,” a largely honorary title.
He is currently in negotiations with Jay Penske for a contract extension, sources close to the company tell Media Ink, although he may be downgraded to an “adviser.”
His son, Gus Wenner, who stayed on as president and chief operating officer of Rolling Stone, has already extended his three-year contract for at least another year, a source close to the situation said.
Penske Media, which acquired majority control of Rolling Stone in 2017, has since acquired the minority portion and owns 100 percent.
Wolfgang Blau is stepping down as the president of Condé Nast International in London and as chief operating officer of the overall company in New York. The move comes a year after the far-flung media empire behind Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ and Vanity Fair, which is controlled by the billionaire Newhouse family, consolidated its domestic and international wings under one CEO, Roger Lynch. There’s no replacement for Blau, who is heading to a fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. He broke the news of his departure on Twitter. “As a company, we are ‘all heart’ and so there is some heartache as much as there is excitement for me about what comes next. I am so thankful,” he tweeted. Lynch in a memo to staffers Thursday said it was Blau’s decision to exit after five years at the company, where he pushed the international expansion of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Wired and others.