Trades

On Martin Luther King Day, the Hollywood Reporter website was visited by a record 650,000 people. Even though the reviews for the third Ricky Gervais-hosted Golden Globes were lukewarm, folks evidently still wanted to drink in the night’s fashions, celeb sound bytes and more.

In the wake of Billy Crystal‘s similarly panned Oscar performance, the same Web traffic equation has been borne out with an even greater force. THR tells FishbowlLA that for the first time, their website on Monday surpassed the single-day mark of one million unique visitors.

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Well, that was quick. A couple of months after joining Source Interlink Media as publisher of its American Motorcycle Group, Jim Adolph has landed himself a promotion. He’ll now be the group publisher for all Source Interlink Media street motorcycle titles.

SIM also promoted Super Streetbike editor David Sonsky to publisher of its International Motorcycle Group–which consists of Super Streetbike, Motorcyclist, Sport Rider, and Motorcycle Cruiser.

Previously on FishbowlLA: American Motorcycle Group Names New Publisher

Looks like TheWrap-Reuters is getting some additional competition.

Per a press release issued today by AP, the venerable wire service has pacted with Prometheus Global Media for a similar entertainment industry news feed, launching later this month. In this case, Associated Press will be parsing items from the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard. Per the release:

“Being part of AP’s massive distribution network will open THR to huge new audiences from around the world,” said The Hollywood Reporter editorial director Janice Min…

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Even though Variety originally had a case and proper settlement with regards to Los Angeles punk band The Vandals borrowing a little too closely in terms of font color and style for the cover of their 2004 album “Hollywood Potato Chip,” the trade chose to renew this legal battle in 2010. That strange sequel has now come to an end.

THR Esq columnist Matthew Belloni spoke with the band’s lead singer, Joe Escalante, who represented himself and the band in court. This time around, there is an agreement for each side to walk away and pay their own legal fees. It all adds up to a few more legal scars for Escalante:

“This was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and to the band, and the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” says Escalante. “However, as my wife says, the crash course in federal court litigation made me a better lawyer.”

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In the arcane, moneyed world of “For Your Consideration” ads, there are each year a number of pitches that rub Academy members the wrong way. But after a paid email blast was sent out this week by both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, TheWrap reporter Steve Pond is getting some blowback for suggesting that the transmission was only borderline AMPAS-legal:

Weinstein Company COO David Glasser responded: “We are surprised that a media outlet like TheWrap, which normally has journalistic integrity, would print the strange accusation of an anonymous competitor and use this as a direct broadside against Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.”

Can you guess who the anonymous competitor is? The email in question, paid for by Weinstein Co., featured the subject line “Meryl Streep Exclusive Video” and linked to a screening Q&A conversation between the actress and Deadline.com’s Pete Hammond. During the clip, Hammond exclaims that the 29-year gap in Streep winning an Oscar really needs to be rectified.

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In recent weeks, FishbowlLA has written about two separate Variety.com blog posts that alleged the time-stamps of Emma Stone and Sundance Film Festival news items on Deadline.com were false. In both cases, Variety‘s BlogDogger–based on some stated live Web monitoring–insinuated that Deadline.com must have jerry-rigged the date-time stamps of these particular articles, to make it appear that the items were posted earlier than when they actually were.

Baloney, counters the author of both Deadline.com items, Mike Fleming. Speaking to FishbowlLA today via telephone from New York, he explained that he has the ability to direct-post articles to Deadline.com and did so with the first article in question, about Stone’s project Little White Corvette.

“I had the story done the night before,” Fleming explains. “I wake up early every morning here in New York, before driving my daughter to school. My computer is always on, and even though I had been in touch with GK Films the previous day and was told I could post the item sooner, I figured I would just break it in the morning.” In other words, Fleming says the 6:00 am ET/3:00 am PT time-stamp on the Stone item reflects what he did at his computer the morning of Thursday, January 5.

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A few weeks ago, we picked up a report from Variety‘s in-house BlogDogger, which claimed that the time-stamp for a Deadline.com item about an Emma Stone movie project had been falsified to match the 3:00am PT January 5 mark of a similar report on Variety. On behalf of Deadline, Nikki Finke responded a few days later, without—as Variety film writer Jeff Sneider and others subsequently tweeted—addressing the core issue of an apparent magical time-stamp. She explained that Deadline.com reporter Mike Fleming had been working on the same Stone news for several days beforehand, and this, apparently, justified whatever may or may not have followed.

Well, here we go again. According to BlogDogger, after Variety posted an item by Sneider and Josh Dickey on Monday night at 7:37 p.m. PT about the Sundance sale of The Surrogate, the article was followed in short order by similar items at LATimes.com and HollywoodReporter.com. Then, once again, a Deadline.com Fleming item appeared with a time-stamp that BlogDogger alleges was illicitly tweaked to cozy up to that of THR‘s third-place report posted at 8:19 p.m PT/11:19 pm ET.

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El Segundo’s Truckin‘ magazine just re-launched after a complete overhaul and redesign. We’re going to be honest, we drive a compact. So we weren’t too familiar with the mag. But the press release promises a reconstituted commitment to “every corner of the truck segment,” as well as a “men’s interest” feel. We thought “men’s interest” went without saying for a magazine about trucks. But surely there must be some ladies out there who love them some trucks too.

Truckin’ plans to boost newsstand circulation by 23,000. So we’re going to hazard a guess that “men’s interest” must mean “boobs.” 23,000 is an awful lot of extra magazines to sell to American men in a down economy.

Back in 1935, Variety famously uncorked a trade headline for the ages: “Sticks Nix Hick Pix.”

This weekend, there is another striking Variety headline, but unfortunately for the publication, this particular banner scream will go down in the history books for some decidedly less clever phonetic sourcing of the alphabet’s 24th letter. By FishbowlLA’s count, there are a boffo 30 x’s crowning Karen Idelson‘s item about the film industry’s switch to digital production means:

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Following the lead of sister publication Billboard, which spun off a Russian edition in 2007, the Hollywood Reporter is set to launch a glossy Russian-language monthly print publication in March. To be followed in short order by companion website thehollywoodreporter.ru.

The investor group backing The Hollywood Reporter: Russian Edition is the same one that underwrote the aforementioned Billboard Russia and includes Studio Three T, the production facility of writer-director Nikita Mikhalkov (pictured). Mikhalkov competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival with Burn by the Sun 2 and received a special career achievement honor at the 2007 Venice International Film Festival.

The Russian editorial team will be guided from LA by editorial director Janice Min, creative director Shanti Marlar and international news editor Kevin Cassidy. From the press release going out today:

“The Hollywood Reporter: Russian Edition represents the return of high quality field-reporting to the Russian entertainment market. We will offer readers a rare behind-the-scenes look into the Russian entertainment industry along with in-depth features and hard-hitting market analysis,” says THR: Russian Edition editor-in-chief Ivan Kudryavtsev.

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