Billboard stylized as billboard is an American entertainment media brand owned by the Billboard-Hollywood Reporter Media Group, a division of. It publishes pieces involving news, video, opinion, reviews, events, and style. It is also known for its , including the and , tracking the most popular songs and albums in different genres. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm, and operates several TV shows. Billboard was founded in 1894 by William Donaldson and James Hennegan as a trade publication for bill posters. Billboard The July 30, 2016 cover featuring and Editor Ross Scarano Former editors Tony Gervino, Bill Werde, Tamara Conniff Categories Frequency Weekly Publisher Lynne Segall Total circulation 17,000 magazines per week 15. It also created a mail service for travelling entertainers. Billboard began focusing more on the music industry as the , , and became commonplace. Many topics it covered were spun-off into different magazines, including Amusement Business in 1961 to cover outdoor entertainment, so that it could focus on music. After Donaldson died in 1925, Billboard was passed down to his children and Hennegan's children, until it was sold to private investors in 1985, and has since been owned by various parties. First issue of Billboard 1894 The first issue of Billboard was published in , on November 1, 1894, by William Donaldson and James Hennegan. Initially, it covered the advertising and industry and was called Billboard Advertising. At the time, billboards, posters and paper advertisements placed in public spaces were the primary means of advertising. Donaldson handled editorial and advertising, while Hennegan, who owned Hennegan Printing Co. The first issues were just eight pages long. A department for agricultural fairs was established in 1896. The title was changed to The Billboard in 1897. That May, Donaldson changed it from a monthly to a weekly paper with a greater emphasis on breaking news. He improved editorial quality and opened new offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, London and Paris. He also re-focused the magazine on outdoor entertainment like fairs, carnivals, circuses, and burlesque shows. A section devoted to circuses was introduced in 1900, followed by more prominent coverage of outdoor events in 1901. Billboard also covered topics including regulation, a lack of professionalism, economics and new shows. As railroads became more developed, Billboard set up a mail forwarding system for traveling entertainers. This service was first introduced in 1904. It became one of Billboard 's largest sources of profit and celebrity connections. By 1914, there were 42,000 people using the service. It was also used as the official address of traveling entertainers for draft letters during. In the 1960s, when it was discontinued, Billboard was still processing 1,500 letters per week. In 1920, Donaldson made a controversial move by hiring an African-American journalist James Albert Jackson to write a weekly column devoted to African-American performers. According to The Business of Culture: Strategic Perspectives on Entertainment and Media, the column identified discrimination against black performers and helped validate their careers. Jackson was the first black critic at a national magazine with a predominantly white audience. According to his grandson, Donaldson also established a policy against identifying performers by their race. Donaldson died in 1925. Focus on music Billboard 's editorial changed focus as technology in recording and playback developed. Billboard began covering the motion picture industry in 1907, but ended up focusing on music due to competition from. It created a Billboard radio broadcasting station in the 1920s. The jukebox industry continued to grow through the and advertised heavily in Billboard. The proliferation of the phonograph and radio also contributed to its growing music emphasis. This was followed by a chart for jukebox records in 1944 called Music BoxMachine charts. By the 1940s, Billboard was more of a music industry specialist publication. The number of charts it published grew after , due to a growing variety of music interests and genres. It had eight charts by 1987, covering different genres and formats, and 28 charts by 1994. By 1943, it had about 100 employees. The magazine's offices moved to Brighton, Ohio in 1946, then to New York City in 1948. A five-column tabloid format was adopted in November 1950 and coated paper was first used in Billboard 's print issues in January 1963, allowing for photojournalism. By 1969, Billboard Publications Inc. It also acquired Photo Weekly that year. Over time, the subjects Billboard still covered outside of music were spun-off into separate publications. Funspot magazine was created in 1957 to cover amusement parks and Amusement Business was created in 1961 to cover outdoor entertainment. In January 1961, Billboard was renamed to Billboard Music Week to emphasize its new exclusive interest in music. Two years later, it was renamed to just Billboard. In the early 1990s, Billboard introduced Billboard Airplay Monitors, a publication for disc jockeys and music programmers. Changes in ownership Billboard struggled after its founder William Donaldson died in 1925 and within three years was once again heading towards. His sons, Bill and Roger, became co-publishers in 1946 and inherited the publication in the late 1970s after Roger Littleford's death. The investors cut costs and acquired a trade publication for the Broadway theatre industry called Backstage. As BPI Communications, it acquired , , and. It purchased , which is a high-tech firm for tracking music airtime. In 1993, it created a division called Billboard Music Group for music-related publications. VNU acquired the in advertising and the National Research Group in 1997, as well as in 1999. BPI was combined with other entities in VNU in 2000 to form Bill Communications Inc. By the time that CEO Gerald Hobbs retired in 2003, VNU had grown substantially larger, but it had a large amount of debt from the acquisitions. New CEO Robert Krakoff divested some of the previously owned publications, restructured the organization, and planned some acquisitions before dying suddenly in 2007 to be replaced by Greg Farrar. Nielsen owned Billboard until 2009, when it was one of eight publications sold to e5 Global Media Holdings. The following year, the new parent company was renamed to. Three years later, Guggenheim Partners acquired Pluribus' share of Prometheus and became the sole owner of Billboard. In December 2015, Guggenheim Digital Media spun out several media brands, including Billboard, to its own executive, Todd Boehly. The assets operate under the Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group, a unit of the holding company. He reworked the publication's music charts. Rather than rely on data from music retailers, new charts used data from store checkout scanners obtained from. He also wrote in-depth profiles on musicians. Keith Girard replaced White before being fired in May 2004. The lawsuit claimed they experienced sexual harassment, a hostile work environment and a financially motivated lack of editorial integrity. Email evidence suggested human resources were given special instructions to watch minority employees. The case was settled out-of-court in 2006 for a non-disclosed sum. In the 2000s, economic decline in the music industry dramatically reduced readership and advertising from Billboard 's traditional audience. Circulation declined from 40,000 in circulation in the 1990s to less than 17,000 by 2014. The publication's staff and ownership were also undergoing frequent changes. In 2004, Tamara Conniff became the first female and youngest-ever executive editor at Billboard. She led the first major redesign of Billboard since the 1960s. During her tenure, Billboard newsstand sales jumped 10%, ad pages climbed 22% and conference registrations rose 76%. In 2005 Billboard expanded its editorial outside the music industry into other areas of digital and mobile entertainment. She launched the Billboard Women in Music event in 2007. The magazine has since been making changes to make it more of a general interest music news source, as opposed to solely an industry trade. It started covering more celebrity, fashion, and gossip. Min hired Tony Gervino as the publication's editor, which was different than Billboard's historical appointments, in that he did not have a background in the music industry. Tony Gervino was appointed editor-in-chief in April 2014. An item on covered a leaked version of Billboard 's annual survey, which it said had more gossip and focused on less professional topics than prior surveys. For example, it polled readers on a lawsuit pop-star filed against her producer alleging sexual abuse. Gervino was let go in May 2016. A note from Min to the editorial staff indicated that Senior Vice President of Digital Content Mike Bruno would serve as the head of editorial moving forward. On June 15, 2016, , the very first Billboard chart company in Southeast Asia, mainly in the Philippines, was announced. Billboard publishes a news website and weekly magazine that cover music, video and home entertainment. Most of the articles are written by staff writers, while some are written by industry experts. The charts track music sales, radio airtime and other data about the most popular songs and albums. The chart of the top-selling songs was introduced in 1958. Since then, the , which tracks the top-selling albums, has become more popular as an indicator of commercial success. Billboard has also published books in collaboration with and a radio and television series called American Top Forty, based on Billboard charts. A daily Billboard Bulletin was introduced in February 1997 and Billboard hosts about 20 industry events each year. Billboard is considered one of the most reputable sources of music industry news. It has a print circulation of 17,000 and an online readership of 1. The website includes the Billboard Charts, news separated by music genre, videos, and a separate website. It also compiles lists, hosts a fashion website called Pret-a-Reporter, and publishes eight different newsletters. Retrieved June 15, 2016. In Lampel, Joseph; Shamsie, Jamal; Lant, Theresa. The Business of Culture: Strategic Perspectives on Entertainment and Media. Series in Organization and Management. Retrieved November 5, 2015. Music in American life. 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