Billboard magazine was sold…

Historic US music magazine Billboard has been acquired by an investment banker from current owner Guggenheim Partners. Todd Boehly has bought a suite of brands from Guggenheim for an undisclosed fee. The portfolio also includes The Hollywood Reporter (THR) and the production company behind The Golden Globes, Dick Clark Productions, as well as media brands Adweek, Mediabistro and the Clio Awards.

A reorganisation is already underway: Boehly says that THR and Billboard will be operationally brought together in a division called ‘The Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group’. The current management of both titles will remain into 2016, however. That includes Janice Min, Co-President and Chief Creative Officer of both THR and Billboard. Boehly has close connections to the titles: for the past five years, he has led Guggenheim’s media investments.

As a result of the acquisition, Boehly is no longer is an executive at Guggenheim Partners, but will remain a major shareholder and a member of the firm’s executive committee. Guggenheim bought Billboard alongside trades THR and AdWeek back in 2009 from Nielsen, for around $70m. According to a New York Post article from earlier this year, these titles are currently losing in the range of $25 million a year. THR and Billboard laid off 10 staff earlier this year, including Billboard correspondent Phil Gallo as well as editor-at-large Joe Levy.

Todd Boehly is an investment banker who also happens to own baseball team The Los Angeles Dodgers. Guggenheim hired Boehly, a former Credit Suisse First Boston banker with expertise in traded loans and junk bonds, in 2013. Billboard was first founded in November 1, 1894 as an earnest trade title for the bill-posting advertising industry – hence the name. It began carrying its world-famous music charts in the 1930s, following the invention of the jukebox.

Source: Music Business Worldwide