Janice Brooks
From:
Pleasant Gap Pa
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Posted 23 Feb 2002 8:14 am |
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British owner pulling plug on S.F.'s Gavin
Radio trade magazine hurt by decline in conference attendance
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Pop Music Editor Friday, February 22, 2002
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The British media company that owns Gavin, the long-standing San Francisco radio trade publication, will close it at the end of the month, sources close to the magazine say, even as radio programmers and record company promotion executives gathered yesterday for the 16th annual Gavin Seminar at the Hyatt Regency.
Gavin has lost a stream of top executives in the past few months, and the conference, which drew more than 2,800 two years ago, the last time it was held in the city, will be lucky to host more than 800 conventioneers this week.
Gavin's owners failed in efforts to sell the company to several prospective buyers, including famed record producer Phil Ramone.
"Decisions are being made," said Vanessa Thomas, who until last month was executive director of sales and marketing at Gavin. "It's for sale. There are potential buyers in the wings."
Consolidation in both the record and radio industries has hurt the company's advertising base and convention attendance. Since starting the Gavin Seminars in 1986, these annual events have grown to become a significant cash cow for the company, through $500 registration fees, lucrative sponsorships and promotional considerations from record labels.
Past events have been well-attended, star-studded affairs. At the 2000 Gavin Seminar, Elton John unveiled a record for an invited audience at the Fairmont Hotel's Venetian Room, and Tony Bennett sang for a lunchtime meeting.
This year, Mayor Willie Brown will do an onstage interview with former Gavin editor Ben Fong-Torres, parodists Tenacious D will take part in a panel discussion, and DreamWorks rookies the K.G.B. will perform for the Top 40 luncheon. Persuading labels to spend as much as $10,000 to present their acts before the radio programmers this year, according to longtime Gavin marketing man Rick Galliani, was "harder than ever."
The Gavin Report was founded in 1958 by "Lucky Lager Dance Time" disc jockey Bill Gavin as a weekly mimeographed tip sheet on new records for radio stations. Over the years, Gavin developed a reputation as an honest man in a corrupt business, "a combination of Col. Sanders and Ralph Nader," one associate said. He died at age 77 in 1985, two years after selling his trade publication to his top staffers. They sold the operation in 1992 to British media conglomerate United Business Media, which publishes PR Newswire, among dozens of other trade publications.
Since Gavin Chief Executive Officer David Dalton left the company three months ago, the San Francisco office has been supervised by new CEO Paul Gallo out of his New York offices. Gallo did not return calls to The Chronicle.
Although the company experienced some success with a recent daily news fax called G-Mail, one of its chief writers recently left to work for the competition, another daily fax report called Street Talk, published by rival trade magazine Radio & Records. The glossy, often fluffy Gavin magazine has lost a lot of its credibility (and, worse, advertisers) over recent years.
"You've got to have a reason for being," said ex-Gavin Executive Director Sandy Skeie, who left the company in November. "Gavin used to be about the music -- sort of a music director's magazine. Now it doesn't have a focus."
With broadcast behemoths like ClearChannel Communications, which initially refused to cooperate at all this year with the Gavin conference, and Infinity Broadcasting snapping up hundreds of radio stations across the country in the past several years, the entire radio industry is controlled by a few companies.
Similar mergers and acquisitions in the record business have left only five major record companies still standing.
With fewer companies and fewer employees, Gavin attendance this year has dwindled to the lowest since its first year. Some insiders thought the publication would close before the convention, but the company would still have had to pay for the reserved hotel rooms, so the seminar went ahead.
"It was a great brand," said Dave Sholin, the longtime Gavin Top 40 editor who left four years ago to do record promotion. "I don't know what happened."
E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.
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Janice "Busgal" Brooks
ICQ 44729047
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