• Bloomberg Businessweek, Thursday, April 14, 2011 4 PM

Hollywood Reporter could be starting up a Bollywood edition -- and the New York offices of its owner, Prometheus Global Media, "have dingy, pockmarked walls and a pile of old, broken computers lying in a hallway" -- unlike the glossatorium that was surely Prometheus CEO Richard Beckman's when he was a Conde Nast advertising big-wig.

Those tidbits come from Andrew Goldman's long profile of Beckman in Bloomberg Businessweek, which -- while it fails to provide the latest news about Prometheus books Mediaweek and Brandweek being consolidated into Adweek -- does look in-depth at how Hollywood Reporter is doing. (Not that well, all in all -- but, with a private equity deal powering Prometheus' purchase of Hollywood Reporter and other pubs at the end of 2009, "the financial health of the magazines might be beside the point," writes Goldman. )

Goldman reports on Beckman's attempt to move into a consumer/trade pub model he wants to relabel "Business-to-influencer," which means "your product is talking to not just the industry but also to that top-of-the-pyramid consumer who follows those industries."

We love the response of former Hollywood Reporter publisher Bob Dowling, who "finds Beckman's notion that there's something novel about a trade publication trying to lure consumer advertising amusing," Goldman writes. "You honestly think that we didn't think of that?" [Dowling] asks. "The Hollywood Reporter had a monthly magazine in the mid-'80s. Guess what they were trying to do? Get consumer advertising. That didn't work." ;

Read the whole story at Bloomberg Businessweek »