Lynne Segall Ditches Deadline to Return to Hollywood Reporter UPDATED

Lynne Segall is one happy woman. And The Hollywood Reporter’s Janice Min is smart to bring Segall home to the trade she always loved, this time as senior vice president and publisher. THR was dumb to let her go, after 20 years, in the first place. Segall went on to transform the endemic advertising at the Los Angeles Times to take advantage of entertainment trade ads with The Envelope–chasing premium Oscar and Emmy ads–which all the print and online trades now do.

And she then she took her Hollywood savvy to Jay Penske’s MMC Media corporation, which owns Deadline, helping to professionalize the site. Min had the perspicacity to see how well Segall had moved an increasingly competitive Deadline from a one-woman show at the LA Weekly to a competitive trade flush with ads. It’s a big loss for Penske. The trade wars continue. And Min has no intention of losing.

UPDATE: Here’s Nikki Finke’s take. I know that she has boasted about how well those Oscar print supplements performed. And while she may say that she does not care about those ads, you can bet that Penske does. Segall told The Wrap: “Do you think I can tell Nikki Finke what to write? She’s not gonna listen to Lynne Segall.”

Here’s David Poland Part One and Part Two, where he really goes to town. (Finke has threatened to sue Poland.) With Segall on board, Deadline has done very well, but Segall, Michael Speier, and others have fallen by the wayside as Finke demands to be in charge, to create an online trade with bite. That makes for compelling reading, but many forces are working to make Deadline implode. Keeping that delicate balance will continue to be Penske’s challenge.