Trades

If and when that Lifetime TV movie being developed by Johnny Depp’s company about William R. Wilkerson, founder of The Hollywood Reporter, comes to fruition, a whole new generation will be introduced to Tinseltown’s original trade reporter. For now, Wilkerson’s pioneering publishing work stands as something of a footnote to his LA nightclub and Las Vegas Strip legacies.

To understand the power of Wilkerson’s front-page “Tradeviews” THR op-eds, which he began writing immediately upon launching the paper in 1930, his son William Wilkerson III (pictured, left) tells FishbowlLA one need look no further than an actor who famously went on to not give a damn. “ I personally like the editorials he wrote about someone that made them instant celebrities or movie stars,” Wilkerson says. “Clark Gable was a nobody. On July 13, 1931, my dad wrote about him and it instantaneously made him famous.”

Wilkerson’s column ran for 33 years and tackled issues that in some cases would still be inflammatory today. The original THR office was located a few blocks above Sunset on Highland, and by the end of year number two (1931), the ten-page-or-so newspaper had a national circulation of 25,000. Wilkerson was quickly banned from Hollywood studio lots because of his hardball tactics and battled the moguls, hard, for several decades before finally breaking down their monopolistic ways in 1947.

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Since launch in 2009, TheWrap has proven to be a fertile training ground for entertainment journalists. Among the earliest examples of reporters who worked under Sharon Waxman before moving on to other outlets are Amy Kaufman (now with the LA Times), Josef Adalian (Vulture), Hunter Walker (New York Observer), Josh Dickey (Variety), Jeff Sneider (Variety) and Dominic Patten (Deadline).

Still, with the recent departure of Jason Scoggins, Cindy Kaplan and Joshua L. Weinstein for Film Funds LLC, the following photo now stands as a rather graphic representation of the kind of turnover Waxman (and others in the space like The Hollywood Reporter and the LA Times) must sometimes deal with. Of the ten people flanking Waxman in this April 1, 2011 birthday celebration snapshot obtained by FishbowlLA, only one person remains employed with the start-up company today.

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The operator of the cheeky new Blogspot page Trade Fools wishes to remain “anonymous on all fronts.” Which is fine by us. It worked for Mark Lisanti during the earliest days of defamer.com and doesn’t seem to have hurt the media profile of that Crazy Days and Nights dude either.

The site is a solid work-in-progress. For example, items like today’s “Whitney Houston Reality Crap: Who Had It First?” need to do more than simply note which mouth of the four-headed beast was quickest to the content buffet.

On the other hand, the poll question on the right-hand margin is pretty funny and a May 9 item shared some good info about Deadline contributor Don Groves. All told, Trade Fools is a welcome addition to the Hollywood-centric blogosphere.

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The latest news about the impending sale of Variety comes courtesy of gigaOM-paidContent senior writer Daniel Frankel. According to his source, just under a dozen groups are currently evaluating the possibility of acquiring the only Hollywood trade behind a paywall:

A Variety staff member who was briefed by management on the status of the sale told paidContent that 11 potential bidders have asked to see the deal book. He wouldn’t disclose who those bidders are…

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Several weeks after the hiring was first announced by Anne Thompson, former Hollywood Reporter staffer Jay A. Fernandez has officially started today as Indiewire news editor and senior writer.

Per usual when it comes to these sorts of things, the Twitter welcome mat continues to be cast far and wide. Indiewire founder emeritus Eugene Hernandez welcomed Fernandez last Thursday to New York, where the latter has traveled to help cover the Tribeca Film Festival. Meanwhile, former THR colleague Daniel Miller returned a Fernandez weekend tweet-compliment by linking today to a review by the writer of a pair of Tribeca documentaries:

Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal introduced Sexy Baby Friday with the straightforward admonition that as the mother of two teenage girls, she feels this doc is “the scariest movie I watched” from the fest program. When some in the crowd chuckled, she added, “We can laugh about it, but it’s not funny.”

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We told you a few weeks ago about the foreign posting of Hollywood Reporter New York bureau chief George Szalai. He in fact officially starts his new duties as London-based international business editor for the publication this week.

To help fill the Manhattan gap created by Szalai’s transatlantic move, THR has rewarded Eriq Gardner, the hard-working and often headline-grabbing contributor to the publication’s Hollywood, Esq. legal column, with the full-time position of senior editor. From today’s announcement:

A contributor to The Hollywood Reporter since 2007, Gardner has been the primary writer of Hollywood, Esq., a Webby Award-winning entertainment law blog launched in 2008 by THR news director Matthew Belloni and Gardner. The site has been recognized as one of the best law blogs by the American Bar Association.

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The worldwide Web traffic in February 2012 for the Hollywood trades is pretty much what you’d expect. THR is a runaway leader with just under seven million uniques; deadline.com comes in a solid second at around a million-eight, followed by TheWrap and Variety.

More surprising are some of the other details compiled in a comScore comparison obtained by FishbowlLA. For example, according to the breakdown, within the U.S., Variety skews youngest among the four trades, hitting the 25-to-34 demo foremost. TheWrap meanwhile reportedly appeals more to women and readers ages 45-to-54. Sharon Waxman’s site also has, by far, the weakest international imprint.

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There’s some interesting grist for the Variety mill to be found in an article on TheWrap by Sharon Waxman and her media critic Lucas Shaw. The pair note that today, the Reed Elsevier property will release financials, perhaps in hopes of spurring buyer interest.

So just how profitable is the second oldest Hollywood trade? Waxman and Lucas guesstimate that on annual revenues of $45 million, the publication clears between six and seven million. As far as who makes sense as a buyer, there’s this observation in the article from Quantum Media principal Ava Seave:

Seave said the key is finding a buyer, like a Bloomberg or a Dow Jones, that could leverage existing infrastructure. “Bloomberg is super smart, and they do care about media,” Seave said. “They can, in a really intelligent way, use the content and are really great with data.”

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With an informational meeting about the pending SAG-AFTRA merger set for what is forecast to be a rain-soaked weekend, a separate media storm has come the union’s way courtesy of Nikki Finke.

Under the shocking headline “EXCLUSIVE: Feds Investigating SAG P&H Plan Embezzlements And Cover-Ups Allegations,” Finke yesterday afternoon outlined details of a possible embezzlement scandal. Her sources indicated that testimony delivered late last year at the Federal Building in Westwood by former fund exec Craig E. Simmons was the spark that lit this fuse.

In an attempt to mitigate the fallout from Finke’s reports (another was published Tuesday), the fund released a statement to the media today, first tipped to Hollywood Reporter legal correspondent Jonathan Handel. The statement has also been provided to FishbowlLA and can be read in full at the bottom of this article.

Although the Producers Plans statement does not explicitly name Deadline.com as the offending outlet, it’s clearly who they are talking about. Included in Finke’s sensational report are a pair of PDF-ed letters from Simmons.

Here’s the media statement from SAG-PPHP:

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In the trade trenches of Hollywood, a lot of PR jockeying goes on between folks at Deadline.com, the Hollywood Reporter and TheWrap with regards to Web traffic bragging rights. As opposed to the gang at Variety, who seem blissfully preoccupied with other matters behind their paywall.

Today, TheWrap has accidentally perfected a new formula for hits and page view success. Per the screen grab at left, the site’s top three articles this morning all have to do with a certain CBS sitcom.

And here’s the kicker. None of this “Most Popular” trio is a current article. ‘The Big Bang Theory’: 100 Episodes of a Show No One Hates was published January 19, 2012; ‘Big Bang Theory’s’ Jim Parson: Grilled reaches all the way back to September 6, 2009; and ‘Big Bang Theory’ Star Jim Parsons Has a New Imaginary Friend posted November 30, 2011.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to get on the phone to Parsons’ publicist.