By Owen Reyes · Republished 2026-05-20 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, 2013
In January 2013 FishbowlLA reported a corporate rebrand that signaled bigger ambitions for The Hollywood Reporter’s owner — and a sharper rivalry at the top of the trade business.
Then
Under Guggenheim Partners, The Hollywood Reporter’s parent company — until then known as Prometheus Global Media — took a new name, Guggenheim Digital Media, and a new leader.
Former Yahoo and Fox Interactive Media executive Ross Levinsohn was announced as CEO of the renamed umbrella company. He would oversee The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Adweek, the Film Expo Group and the CLIO Awards, while also scouting new media businesses for the financial-services giant to invest in or acquire.
FishbowlLA read the move as pointed competitive news for Penske Media’s Jay Penske, who controlled Deadline and Variety, and as a potentially ominous development for Sharon Waxman’s TheWrap. The post added that Guggenheim had confirmed it acquired the remaining stake held by Jimmy Finkelstein’s Pluribus Capital, and pointed readers to Nikki Finke’s reaction to the news.
Now
Guggenheim Digital Media proved short-lived as a banner. Within a couple of years Guggenheim’s entertainment titles were spun out to a group of executives, and the eventual destination was a 2020 joint venture between Penske Media and Eldridge — meaning The Hollywood Reporter ended up under the same corporate roof as the Variety and Deadline it had been positioned to fight.
Ross Levinsohn’s path ran on through Los Angeles media: he later became publisher of the Los Angeles Times under Tronc, a tenure cut short by controversy, and afterward led the company that owned Sports Illustrated.
The other names mark the era’s end. Jimmy Finkelstein went on to found the political outlet The Messenger, which launched and folded within a year. Nikki Finke, the Deadline founder whose reaction the post cited, died in 2014. The 2013 rebrand reads now as one early move in a long consolidation that ended with almost the entire trade-press field gathered into a single ownership orbit.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.