Trades

You know the recession is real when even the folks in porn don't have job security. AVN Media Network Inc., publishers of trade journals for the adult entertainment industry, has announced plans to consolidate four of their six print publications into one monthly magazine. The company hasn't announced which titles are being consolidated, but we're betting on AVN Online and AVN Novelty Business after reading the following statement from Darren Roberts, the company's CEO:

"Retailers, distributors, video producers, webmasters, sex toy manufacturers, lingerie designers, and other adult industry professionals can still rely on AVN to be the definitive trade publication for this diverse and robust industry. However, today's demand to deliver value to the advertiser is greater than ever before, and AVN is in the unique position of being able to leverage its 27 year-old brand in order to significantly expand the reach of its products and services."

Trade publication TelevisionWeek will cease printing at the end of the month. The TV programming newspaper will continue to publish online, but much of the staff will be laid off. Variety.com has details:

The weekly TV trades have been hurt in recent years by consolidation in the syndication and TV station businesses, which were the bread and butter of pubs like TV Week. Once upon a time, events like NATPE would generate enough ads for 100-plus page issues; but that advertising has dried up in recent years.

More recently, TV Week ceased publishing a print pub on some weeks, but continued to produce editions of the paper during those weeks online.

TV Week publisher Chuck Ross will continue to oversee TV Week's online presence, while executive editor Tom Gilbert and deputy editor/columnist Josef Adalian, who just launched a new TV-oriented blog, will also remain; pub is expected to supplement their work with freelancers. Editor Greg Baumann is believed to be departing.

Adult Video News and XBIZ are the two largest adult entertainment business publishers, sort of The Hollywood Reporter and Variety of porn. Like any publishing rivals in the same town, employees sometimes move from one company to the other, their first loyalty being to their paycheck. But now one such move by a sales director has AVN taking XBIZ to court. From an article in, well, XBIZ:

XBIZ and its sales executive, Sara Sazzman, on Tuesday were served with an eight-count complaint, seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages.

The suit, which includes breach of contract claims, misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition, among others, was filed Monday at Los Angeles Superior Court.

XBIZ attorneys said that the company plans to vigorously defend itself against the charges.

Michael Speier, Executive Editor of Variety, has been laid off. More cuts are expected to come at Variety throughout the day. The parent company of the publication, Reed Business Information, is laying off 7% of their staff today according to a memo obtained by The Wrap. From the memo sent by Tad Smith, CEO of RBI:

We recently completed our quarterly forecast for the full year and the revenue outlook continues to concern us. On January 26th I wrote to you that we might reduce further our staffing levels if the economic circumstances became worse than our already conservative expectations for 2009. We are in that unfortunate situation today.

Smith also warns staff that more cuts and furloughs may be on the horizon.

Peter Bart, Variety's editor in chief of 20 years, has been replaced by deputy editor Tim Gray. The article on the Variety website says Bart is being promoted. Nikki Finke has a different take:

Bart's new title is "vice president and editorial director of Variety", but it's meaningless. He and the company are playing this like it's voluntary, but Peter has been pushed "essentially up and out" of the newsroom, as one of my sources puts it. But he'll be allowed to continue as the "face" of Variety in public -- which is something Bart cares a lot about. His column and blog will continue.

Congress doesn't want us to miss our stories any more than the networks do. Variety.com reports on a push by the House to delay the switch to digital broadcasting on February 17:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-West Va.), the incoming chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) have introduced bills that would delay the switch until June 12. Obama administration officials last week called on Congress to delay the transition, saying that the federal effort to prepare consumers for the switch had been insufficient and underfunded.

"In Hollywood they have a different language that they speak. It's spoken by these folks that went to school for just one week."

Thanks to Milk and Cookies for this clip.

Nikki Finke, blogging on Deadlinehollywooddaily.com, has gotten it wrong again.

She proclaimed like a wild banshee that Hollywood Reporter publisher Eric Mika was out.

And that head of advertising Rose Einstein was in.

As seems to be par for the course for Finke, her ducks weren't all in a row.

An insider at Nielsen, which owns the Reporter, told FBLA: "I can tell you there are no current plans for leadership changes at THR."

Variety, owned by London's Reed Elsevier, looked to be the target of overall billion-dollar buyout by British firm Bain Capital, the Independent said on Sunday.

That was then.

Four days later, all bets are off. Reed Elsevier seems to be saying no dice to any and all offers.

Citing the poor economy (what else is new?) and frozen credit markets, Reed Elsevier said it wants to wait until conditions are more favorable.

Chief Executive Officer Crispin Davis planned to sell the unit to make Reed Elsevier less dependent on ad sales and swings in the economy, while using the proceeds to repay debt and safeguard its credit rating.

One of three bidders (probably Bain Capital) dropped out last weekend, according to two people familiar with the process.

"Let's be honest, these are tough markets and the price being proposed was just too low," Alex De Groote, an analyst at Panmure Gordon & Co. in London, told Bloomberg. "This was the only deal anywhere and it was almost bizarre it was still going on in this economy."

It might be back to the drawing board for Reed Elsevier, but Variety says it's nonetheless doing quite well.

Contrary to Nikki Finke's shrill bloggeristic rant that Variety would fold its weekly magazine into the daily paper, even in the dire financial straits that plague journalism, Hollywood's mouthpiece has no current plans for such.

Variety president and publisher Neil Stiles told FBLA that the topic had been considered, but no decision had been made. He also said the idea had been discussed for the last several years. Such a prediction is either three years behind the times or three years ahead, Stiles said.

In fact, the idea was seriously considered way back in 1993 when I started as a reporter at Variety. It was discarded, largely because the Weekly Variety issue is considered a decent earner.

And as Stiles pointed out, in this Internet era of instant news, the Weekly provides a thoughtful forum for analysis of that news. But as all CEOs are wont to do, he left the door open. "Not yet, but it's still a possibility," he said.