Hollywood: The “Je Penske, Donc Je Suis” Era?

By Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

It’s 4:03 am in Hollywood, most of Malibu on the PCH is unrecognizable after the fires, and it could be argued that the Town itself is in “The “Je Penske, Donc Je Suis” Era. What does that even mean? Roger Penske’s son Jay Penske (born 1980) now owns, or controls via PMC (Penske Media Corp.) the following: “Variety, Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Billboard Music Charts, WWD, SHE Media, Robb Report, Deadline, Sportico, BGR, ARTnews, Fairchild Media, Vibe, IndieWire, Dirt, Artforum, Gold Derby, Spy.com and Luminate, the premier music SAS data and analytics company. Penske Media also owns Dick Clark Productions (DCP) the world's largest producer and owner of televised live entertainment programming, which includes the Academy of Country Music Awards, Golden Globe Awards, American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, New Year's Rockin Eve, Streamy Awards, and television programs such as So You Think You Can Dance. In addition, PMC owns several vital cultural events such as SXSW, LA3C, Life is Beautiful, Latin Music Week and ATX Television Festival. In addition, Penske Media is the largest shareholder of Vox Media.”
This impressive list of holdings begs the question for many in Hollywood, “how can one entity own the trades and award shows and keep the integrity or objectivity necessary to create a level playing field with award entrants or films that wish to be nominated for awards?” Good question, and while we may not come up with a conclusive answer? How about let’s just look at how the Je Penske, Donc Je Suis Era came to be?
In 2009, Penske acquired DEADLINE from Founder Nikki Finke, and some say effectively silenced her with a gag order that stopped her from writing for anyone else, and kicked off a firestorm with Finke who may or may not have been paid an alleged $9 M USD which may or may not have included an apartment in the same building as Bright Lights, Big City author John Barrett "Jay" McInerney Jr. The McInerney connection only became public when their inter-hallway confrontations became public record. So how much was Nikki Finke paid, what were the terms? This is less important than the chilling effect of this purchase, which silenced a truly original media voice and shit disturber gadfly in Hollywood. Finke. Who was once listed among the Most Powerful lists in Hollywood, could no longer shout from the cheap seats at the suits in the system, nor could she bring to light any of the thorny issues in the entertainment business. Full disclosure, after DEADLINE she founded Hollywood Dementia, a fiction site that purportedly may have been meant to “expose” any insider dirty laundry in the guise of prose; and although she once tried to sue me personally (story for another day), Nikki did publish my short stories in HD. These are the contradictions that defined a contentious figure like Finke: she loved to hate you or hated to love you. That applied to friends and foes alike, a matter of public record.
But back to our deep dive into repo baby Jay Penke’s amassment of properties in Hollywood. Just the sheer magnitude of the list of holdings detailed earlier gives you a sense of the campaign to, some say, dominate the H’wood landscape. However, besides possibly hamstringing the role of journalists to cover the industry fairly, or objectively given the award show ownership factor, what else is going on here you may wonder? Let’s count down the years to 2025.
DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD DAILY, which became simply DEADLINE by late 2000’s, was acquired for undisclosed terms in 2009, followed by VARIETY (Variety, Daily Variety) in 2012, and next came HOLLYWOOD LIFE in 2014, with a detour in 2011 via the purchase of BILLBOARD. The Billboard acquisition is tricky, because it is reported to have been part of The Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group), which leads to 2019 and the participation in the purchase of THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER in arrangement with MNG Enterprises, though PMC is a second-party player here by most accounts. By 2020, Penske bought WWD (Women’s Wear Daily) outright, and SheKnows Media that same year with full ownership. (The foray into women-centric platforms gave many pause, as Jay Penske the private individual has had some publicized moments of, how shall one say, less than felicitous interactions specifically in yacht club setting with women.)
So who is Jay Penske besides the son of $3.8 billionaire Roger Penske of Penske Automotive Group, among other holdings? Born on May 5, 1979 in NYC, NY, Jay Penske is reported to have a personal net worth of (give or take) $250 M USD and “controls” PMC, although this is sometimes reported to be a “family company” (read: Roger’s money in play?). He is the youngest son of Kathy, an English teacher and Roger Penske who was a former race car driver turned mogul of the racing industry. Make a mental note of the influence of his English teacher mother.
Once upon a time in 1999, Jay Penske opened Dragon Books in Bel Air at 2954 Beverly Glen Circle, Los Angeles, CA. Named allegedly after the first book he ever read, “Dragon. Dragon,” this establishment came into being as “an antiquarian and used bookstore” pre millennium. Penske would have been 20 or so at this time, and it could hardly be considered your average bookshop, with a page from physicist Richard Feynman’s notes going for $33,000 plus or minus a negotiation. This is by way of saying, Jay Penske clearly had a love for all things written and collectible. So by 2003, when he founded PMC, the book store didn’t close up shop until 2014, and apparently went online as of 2000 for e-commerce.
By some media accounts, this same bibliophile is owns or controls the 60th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards (2025), Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2025 (2024) and back as far as ENTV Minute (2012). You may wonder if it’s possible for anyone, or even an organization with a governing board of directors, to successfully handle the challenges and internecine battles that are inevitable in Hollywood since the dawn of The Academy.
Luckily, AMPAS (The Academy) remains a free and clear-ish member organization that represents Hollywood with over 9,000 members at last count, with a full and fair-minded mission to promote diversity and underscore original voices in filmed entertainment not only insofar as Hollywood is concerned, but with directives to encourage worldwide creatives in “the movies,” both short and longford, narrative and non-fiction. That’s a plug for AMPAS, but also a hope that they can remain viable and outwardly objective in the Je Penske, Donc Je Suis Era of dominant ownership by PMC.
Oh wait, we forgot to mention Key Player #2, Todd L. Boehly, Co-founder, CEO, and Chairman of Eldridge & Eldridge Industries, an entity employees 5,000 people. How is he connected to Jay Penske? Well, he’s not connected by the 2020-2021 joint venture with “vulture capitalist” Randy Smith backed (Alden Global Hedge Fund) MNG Enterprises purchase of a huge stake in The Hollywood Reporter. No, his connection to Boehly is via the Golden Globes essentially. Here’s where the rubber meets the road to use a Penske Racing term. 

2021 Year of Crisis for The Golden Globes?

Four years ago, the wheels came off the HFPA (Hollywood Foreign Press Association) that runs The Golden Globe Awards, an annual show that has been around since 1947 and went from honoring films to both films and TV. Basically, not to quote the legal paperwork here but to sum up, HFPA had a damaged reputation in H’wood going back to the 1980’s at least with Pia Zadora’s shock win, followed by alleged rumors about “ticket scalping” and “selling slides from studios” (back when ‘slides’ were a hot commodity overseas for pulling hardcopy prints of movie stars), add to that “racketeering implications” and “treating members” badly, as well as ripping on movie stars behind their backs, also trashing movies and generally acting like a frat party from the 1970’s to who knows when. [Editor’s note: Anonymous insider source quoted here.] “They were so corrupt, nobody in Hollywood trusted them. You could buy them or their votes, most people knew this.” Even Sharon Stone around 1999, allegedly got caught up in the controversy one year over The Muse, an Albert Brooks’ movie she starred in with Jeff Bridges and Andie MacDowell. (She recused herself from the nom process, is the insider retrospective conclusion.) But the writing is on the wall here about how HFPA comported itself in Hollywood, not to mention the Brendan Fraser incident, whose resurgence with The Whale in 2022 speaks volumes as it is the same year the Golden Globes go dark, pulled off the air.
During this crisis year of 2021, Penske et al began cleaning up the place by acquiring a stake in the Golden Globes. We need a chart for this because it is complicated, as the HFPA grew out of WWII as a goodwill organization to promote Hollywood overseas via these “foreign” journalists in town who made up the then-non-profit membership association. Today, the 1947 HFPA is a thing of the past. While the HFPA Foundation exists, there is a complicated structure now as far as the Golden Globes, which came back on the air in 2023, but not in their original NBC programming but on Peacock or various streamers without network reach.
So let’s back the Carr, or EV in today’s terms, up here and take another look at PMC and its figurehead Jay Penske. Should there be crossover ownership between the trades, which are supposed to be objective when it comes to filmed entertainment, and award shows? If you own all the media coverage in Hollywood, how does anyone or any filmed entertainment from elsewhere, get a fair shake come award season? 

Award Season 2025 

Award Season used to begin in November and drag on through March at the latest in Hollywood. Now you have pop-up shows peopling the red carpet landscape like never before. Award season is not as well-defined. Full disclosure, I’ve been involved with the International Press Academy’s once Golden Satellites turned The Satellite Awards since 2001. From this vantage point as a designated hitter writer in every aspect of that show, I’ve seen a few things, shall we say in the business, including the Dick Clark Productions vs HPFA 2010 legal Battle Royale over the NBC on-air deal. This has been dubbed as “The Dirtiest Fight in Hollywood” but more to the point, wasn’t until 2012, or signed-off on until 2014. In reality it was the barn doors closing after the Hollywood horsepower had run out for many. And now that Penske owns a stake, it begs the question of whether he was sold a “pig in poke,” including all the media properties that have been essentially gutted in revenue generation by the online/blog/podcast environment that exists now?
Hollywood hasn’t had a real voice since Nikki Finke, who once had her Oscar credentials pulled sadly. Who is there in this Penske-owned Media Town that can reflect on where we are now, or ask whether the two-hour movie is still viable, or even if Netflix, Apple, Hulu, Pixar are the enemies or the saviors of the business? And what of other repo babies like Megan Ellison (Annapurna) who gave us LAWLESS, ZERO DARK THIRTY, HER, or her brother David Ellison, Founder and CEO of SkyDance since 2010, owner of Paramount now trying to buy Warner Bros with an offer of $24 a share deemed lowball?
Maybe Larry Ellison (Oracle Founder), his $14 BN USD, backing Megan and David can save Hollywood as we know it?
Next we’ll deep dive into the Ellison duo, older brother David, 42, and sister Megan, 39, or just lament the end of things we recognize in Hollywood?
At the end of the script, or the rainbow’s end in OZ, we don’t have a hot air balloon to take us back to Kansas as far as Hollywood in 2025 is concerned. In this Je Penske, Donc Je Suis Era? Just as the recent fires burned the face off PCH down the stretch from Topanga to Malibu, when we knew what to look for in the Town that we love, now it’s anybody’s guess whether the whole ecosystem that includes the studios, producers, filmmakers, screenwriters, publicists, craft people, guild members, grips, gaffers, lighting specialists, VFX folks, even the ticket-buyers will survive. 

(Disclaimer: opinions here held by individual writer, not the site Filmfestivals, Screenmancer or affiliates)
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