Sharon Waxman - FishbowlLA

Live Talks Los Angeles Celebrates Its Third Anniversary

Richard Horgan — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:45:30 +0000

Tomorrow night’s Live Talks Los Angeles event featuring Burt Bacharach in conversation with Mitch Albom is notable for a couple of additional reasons. It will mark the three-year anniversary of the popular local series and is the first of several Live Talks events planned for Glendale’s Alex Theatre.

It all began May 14, 2010 with author Jane Smiley interviewing Dave Barry. Since then, series founder-producer Ted Habte-Gabr has staged more than 100 events, bringing together everyone from Steve Martin and Tina Fey to Fred Willard and Darrell Hammond to Sharon Waxman and Sir Michael Caine. In addition to the evening series, which focuses for the most part on arts and culture, Habte-Gabr curates a downtown daytime business-themed bracket, Live Talks Business.

“We have three events booked at the Alex,” Habte-Gabr tells FishbowlLA via telephone. “The first one is Burt Bacharach; the second one is Phil Jackson in conversation with John Salley on June 12; and the third one is Neil Gaiman in conversation with Geoff Boucher, June 27. Then the Alex shuts down for some major renovations and they open back up in November, at which point we’ll probably have one or two more events there before the end of the year.”

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Lawsuit Pits Jay Penske Against Former Variety Exec

Richard Horgan — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:00:00 +0000

It was to be called Beverly Hills Entertainment Week. But the 2012 event never happened and according to reports late last night on Deadline and TheWrap, past and present regimes of Variety are tangled up in the 90210 details.

Variety Media LLC is claiming in an April 29 LA Superior Court complaint that a $500,000 event sponsorship deal set up previously at Variety with Beverly Hills Media Group was fraudulent. In addition, the trade’s new ownership alleges that because the sponsorship deal was never properly disclosed during due diligence for the PMC-Variety deal, they are now on the hook for a penalty.

The defendants, in a counter-claim filed Tuesday, insist they tried to set up a meeting with Penske during the Variety acquisition process but were denied.* From Sharon Waxman‘s report:

The complaint accuses the unnamed “executive officer” of Variety of engaging in a “fraudulent, self-dealing transaction while the assets of Variety were being marketed for sale for the purpose of diverting substantial revenues generated by Variety…”

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Stacey Farish Ankles TheWrap… for PMC!?

Richard Horgan — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:25:19 +0000

This one is definitely a shocker. Stacey Farish, publisher of TheWrap, has jumped to Variety/Deadline owner PMC.

From this afternoon’s brief Deadline announcement:

Effective immediately, she leaves and becomes publisher of Deadline’s print magazine Awardsline as well as vice president of PMC Entertainment. She will be working with Nic Paul, the senior vice president of PMC Entertainment ad sales…

“Hiring Stacey demonstrates PMC’s commitment to the rapid growth of Deadline as one of the most dynamic companies to watch in the digital media arena,” said PMC founder and CEO Jay Penske.

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FishbowlNY Hires Former TheWrap Media Reporter Alexander C. Kaufman

Richard Horgan — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:00:20 +0000

We have some exciting internal news to share on this Friday afternoon involving our sister site FishbowlNY.

Two weeks after co-editor Jerry Barmash accepted a TV reporter job with the New York Daily News and bid farewell to Mediabistro readers, his replacement has been confirmed. Starting Monday, April 15 as co-editor alongside Chris O’Shea will be former TheWrap media reporter Alexander C. Kaufman.

“I interviewed with a couple of other companies,” Kaufman tells us this afternoon via telephone from Boston. “I’m really excited to be joining Mediabistro and look forward to helping continue to grow the FishbowlNY brand.” Kaufman, a native of Long Island, will be based in New York.

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MTV President on Shain Gandee’s Death: ‘We Can’t Be All the Redemption’

Richard Horgan — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:15:18 +0000

It’s the very last answer given to Sharon Waxman by Van Toffler, president of the MTV Viacom Music and Logo Group, that provokes the most thought. Asked whether shows like Buckwild are guilty of exploiting young stars such as the late Shain Gandee for conglomerate ratings and profit, the executive suggests it’s not up to cable TV to be a full-time chaperone:

“We document and show all sides of what it’s like to be young. From True Life and Jenks, nurturing autistic kids and getting them to prom, to Jersey Shore – you can’t do one without the other.”

“You’re not going to gain their trust by saying “go out to vote” or “get tested for STDs” or “help your neighbor “or “fight for gun control” — or whatever the issue is, unless you’re honest with them. We wouldn’t be in business. We can’t be all the redemption. Life is about sin and redemption.”

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TheWrap Hiring Spree Continues with an Old, Familiar Name: Jeff Sneider

Richard Horgan — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:15:20 +0000

If you’d told us 18 months ago that all four Hollywood trade publications would be flush in the spring of 2013 and raring to (still) go at each other, we would have laughed the way Nikki Finke does when someone brings up the name Jeff Sneider. But lo and behold, that is indeed the case, with the former Variety film reporter today tipping these unlikely scales.

Sneider has rejoined his old outlet TheWrap, moving to the same general geographical neighborhood that his former Variety editor Josh Dickey will soon be occupying for TMZ purposes. (Sneider back at TheWrap… Dickey at TMZ… OK, that may actually be more surprising than what we just referenced above.) From Sharon Waxman’s announcement:

“I once acknowledged that ‘second chances are rare in this business,’ and I’m grateful to TheWrap for believing in me and offering me this exciting opportunity,” Sneider said. “I’ve been impressed with how TheWrap has grown since I’ve been away and I look forward to returning to this top-notch team of entertainment journalists.”

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Variety Film Editor Josh Dickey Heading to TMZ.com

Richard Horgan — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 16:20:04 +0000

Big news this afternoon on the Hollywood trades front. And it’s Nikki Finke once again letting the Variety cat out of the bag.

Film editor Josh Dickey, who recently lost his pit bull reporter Jeff Sneider, has accepted a job with TMZ.com. He will be the site’s new managing editor. From Finke’s brief dispatch:

Dickey will become TMZ’s managing editor after giving his notice at Variety where he was film editor. Variety’s New York editor Jill Goldsmith was let go on March 8th as was Variety’s creative director Paula Taylor more recently.

This is a huge score for Harvey Levin. Dickey, formerly of TheWrap, is leaving the trade quadrangle for a site that sometimes spends a little bit too much time in the sensational gutter. Hopefully, he can temper that. For example, TMZ.com recently got a lot of flack from the family of a Hollywood nightclub shooting victim for airing full cell phone video footage of the crime.

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TheWrap Hires Joseph Kapsch as Deputy Managing Editor

Richard Horgan — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:55:31 +0000

We just wrapped up (pun intended) a brief conference call with Sharon Waxman and Joseph Kapsch. They were kind enough to ring FishbowlLA this morning to let us know that Kapsch, formerly with Celebuzz, The Hollywood Reporter and the LA Times, will be relocating back to the west coast to start as deputy managing editor of TheWrap on March 25.

“I just think that when it comes to the entertainment industry, you have to go where the opportunities are,” Kapsch said. “And this was a really great opportunity for me.” Added Waxman: “I’ve been a fan of Kapsch for a long time and admired what he’s accomplished at other sites.”

Kapsch will be tasked with growing the breadth, depth and audience for content created by the TheWrap’s roster of staff reporters. The site also has a network of several hundred unpaid bloggers, but that side of things will remain the purview of managing editor Lew Harris.

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@TheInSneider is Suddenly a Variety Outsider

Richard Horgan — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:00:36 +0000

Like so many things involving feisty Variety film writer Jeff Sneider, the info was divulged suddenly and without warning via Twitter:

Then came a story on TheWrap about Sneider’s dismissal, written by Alexander C. Kaufman with input from Sharon Waxman. The article gets a critical fact wrong; a tweet referenced was not connected to Robopocalypse but rather was the sixth and final component of Sneider’s rapid-fire expression of dismay on Twitter when he learned he had lost an entirely different long-simmering scoop to The Hollywood Reporter (about Christopher Nolan planning to direct Interstellar).

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In This Star Wars Reporting Episode, Much of the Deserved Credit Gets Lost

Richard Horgan — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 12:45:27 +0000

The biggest Hollywood film scoop of this young year was posted Thursday at 1:33 p.m PT on TheWrap. While a number of Lucas Shaw‘s peers were immediate and effusive with Twitter praise, large chunks of the pick-up coverage about J.J. Abrams being tapped to direct the next-generation installment of Star Wars failed to credit TheWrap and this hard-working media reporter.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world in the trenches of THR, Variety, TheWrap and Deadline, with each being guilty at various times of co-opting film scoops by “confirming,” referencing same-subsequent “documents obtained”, slapping on a questionable EXCLUSIVE and so on. But a scoop of the magnitude of Shaw’s should have been exempt from the usual ticky-tack catch-up tricks.

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THR Parent Gets Shiny New Name, Boss

Richard Horgan — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 11:00:14 +0000

To go along with the endlessly deep pockets of Guggenheim Partners, The Hollywood Reporter‘s parent company Prometheus Global Media now has two additional assets: a new name and a new leader.

Former Yahoo! and Fox Interactive Media exec Ross Levonsohn has been announced as the CEO of a new umbrella company, Guggenheim Digital Media. It’s intriguing mano-a-mano news for PMC’s Jay Penske, overseer of Deadline and Variety, and arguably an ominous development for Sharon Waxman‘s TheWrap:

In his role as CEO of Guggenheim Partners’ newly renamed Guggenheim Digital Media, Levinsohn will oversee THR, Billboard, Adweek, The Film Expo Group and the CLIO Awards. Levinsohn, no stranger to the art of the Hollywood deal, also will look to boost Guggenheim sister properties including Dick Clark Productions. He’ll be tasked with identifying new media businesses in which the global financial services company can invest — or acquire.

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Daniel Frankel Will Now Get Paid to Promote Other People’s Content

Richard Horgan — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 10:45:56 +0000

In her piece about journalist Daniel Frankel’s decision to jump over to the PR side, Anne Thompson suggests that exodus has been increasing lately. We’re not so sure.

Fact is, PR has always been an attractive, cushier, higher-paid alternative to daily news reporting. In Frankel’s case, after he was recently let go from PaidContent. From Thompson’s write-up:

He worked on various beats at Variety from 2001 until he was laid off (along with me and many others) during the recession of 2009. Sharon Waxman brought him in as news editor and senior writer for TheWrap, where he endured until the end of 2011, leaving to become west coast senior editor for PaidContent, where he covered the entertainment media/tech beat. It seemed a perfect fit–until PaidContent was taken over by GigaOM, which had its own set of writers.

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Geoff Boucher Lands at Entertainment Weekly

Richard Horgan — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 10:10:23 +0000

Score one for TheWrap media-film reporter Alexander C. Kaufman. On Wednesday, he tipped that Hero Complex honcho Geoff Boucher would be joining Entertainment Weekly. Today, that news has been officially confirmed.

From this morning’s announcement:

Based in LA, Boucher will be joining EW’s Movies team on October 1st as a senior writer and will add his singular voice to EW’s print and digital platforms.

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Award-Winning TheWrap Blogger Tastelessly Lowers the Bar

Richard Horgan — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 12:45:50 +0000

Nestled deep within TheWrap’s Hollyblogs network, Richard Stellar has made quite a name for himself. Earlier this spring, he claimed a pair of Southern California Journalism Awards from the LA Press Club for Best Weblog, Individual (tied with The Jewish Journal’s Danielle Berrin) and Best Facebook Presence by an Individual.

Which makes Sunday’s posting by Stellar all the more surprising. In a wildly miscalculated and deeply offensive argument, he suggests that the absence of Joan Rivers’ new book from Costco’s limited literary inventory puts the company on par with Nazi Germany. Never mind that only Rivers has suggested there was active censorship involved. Or the fact that because the chain carries such a tiny fraction of published books at any time, the notion that something not being sold is discriminatory borders on ridiculous.

The reader comments to Stellar’s August 12 item say it all. Here are just a few:

Baruch Ashem: I am contacting the Jewish Defense League and other media outlets regarding this article. I am simply aghast and appalled. How dare TheWrap publish this. I am (almost) speechless.

Arrowhead: Is this a hoax? This is a hoax, right?

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Coincidence? Finke Fires Back at THR Hours After Bret Easton Ellis Exclusive

Richard Horgan — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:45:33 +0000

TheWrap – or, as Nikki Finke prefers to call it, TheCrap – remains number one on her list of direct-competitor enemies. A close second is The Hollywood Reporter.

This afternoon, just hours after the Reporter posted an exclusive statement from author Bret Easton Ellis about his own war with Finke, she takes dead aim at a July 20 magazine issue item by Kim Masters. Finke torpedoes the article’s claim that Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Barry Meyer turned down a request by Jeff Bewkes to stay on past his scheduled December 2013 departure date:

THR hangs it on “a knowledgeable source.” Time Warner explained to me, “This story is a complete fabrication. We could not lie about it. Why would we lie about this? Because it’s going to come out one way or the other. Everybody who talked to the Reporter explained that no part of this is true – but they kept writing. How ridiculous.”

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