This should be interesting: Tamara Conniff, who's been running Billboard magazine since 2004, is leaving the Nielsen/VNU-owned pub for Irving Azoff's Front Line Management Group. This is noteworthy for two reasons:
- We get why you might want to leave a trade mag covering a shrinking business. But the concert business is pretty hairy itself right now -- as Tamara's publication itself has pointed out, expensive tickets to see Kid Rock are the kind of things that people cut from their budget in tough times, and the second half of this year looks particularly bad.
- Tamara is fierce, and we mean that in the best possible way. But she'll be working for Irving Azoff, who is really, really fierce (ditto). So these two are going to get along like gangbusters, or someone's going to get bruised.
Billboard executive editor Bill Werde takes over for Tamara in the interim.
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