Billboard began as a trade paper for poster hangers and circus people
The magazine behind the Hot 100 started in Cincinnati in 1894 as Billboard Advertising, eight pages for the men who pasted up bills. For years it covered circuses, fairs and burlesque, and even forwarded mail to touring performers, before jukeboxes and radio turned it into the music industry's scorekeeper.
William Donaldson and James Hennegan published the first issue on November 1, 1894, when posters in public places were the main way to advertise. Donaldson ran the words and the ads; Hennegan, a printer, handled production. In 1900 Donaldson bought out his partner for $500 to rescue the paper from bankruptcy, switched it from monthly to weekly, opened offices from San Francisco to Paris, and steered it toward outdoor entertainment.
Railways made touring common, and from 1904 Billboard tracked where entertainers were headed, collected their letters, and printed notices telling them mail was waiting. By 1914 some 42,000 people relied on the service, and it became one of the paper's biggest earners. In 1920 Donaldson drew criticism for hiring James Albert Jackson to write a weekly column on black performers; no black critic had previously written for a national publication read mainly by white Americans.
Films were ceded to Variety, and the jukebox boom of the Depression pulled Billboard toward records. It printed its first music hit parade on January 4, 1936 and a best-seller chart in 1940, and in 1961 it briefly became Billboard Music Week to signal that music was now its only subject. Timothy White, editor from 1991, rebuilt the charts around checkout scanner data from Nielsen SoundScan instead of reports from retailers.
Ownership kept changing hands at rising prices. After Donaldson's death in 1925 his son-in-law Roger Littleford nursed it back from near ruin, and his family held it until investors bought it in 1985. Later owners included the Dutch group VNU, which became Nielsen, and investors who created Prometheus Global Media. The music industry's slump hit hard: circulation fell from 40,000 in the 1990s to under 17,000 by 2014.
Source: Billboard (magazine)
