Hollywood Media Corporation (NASDAQ:HOLL) has finally ditched their old design.  Their old design looked like it belonged in a time before the dot com bust.  The new Hollywood.com site looks more Web 2.0 styled and has advertising built around it in the same fashion as MySpace.  The homepage wallpaper is the most valuable advertising real estate.

Last month, Hollywood Media sold the domain and the rights to the company’s own Chairman and CEO.  Mitchell Rubenstein, founder of R&S Investments is also the CEO of
Hollywood Media.  He bought the business for $10 million.   Although the ownership changed, Hollywood Media still has the same goals for Hollywood.com.  To become a leading premier portal with a focus on movies and TV. 

The site has seven main categories.  These categories include TV, trailers, movies, celebrities, DVD, and fans.  Hollywood.com is also developing a Facebook widget [paidContent]. 

Hollywood Media is a publicly traded company with a market cap of $75.42 million. Below is a screenshot of the new site:

Hollywood Media Corporation (NASDAQ:HOLL) announced recently that they have sold Hollywood.com and Hollywood.com’s television businesses for a price of $10 million. About $1 million was paid to Hollywood Media up front and the $9 million would be paid as an earn-out payment. The buyer of the company is R&S Investments, LLC.

R&S Investments LLC is a company owned by Mitchell Rubenstein and Laurier Silvers. Rubenstein is the current Chairman and CEO and Silvers is President of Hollywood Media.

Hollywood.com makes up about 4% of Hollywood Media’s total revenue. But Hollywood.com had a net los of $2.5 million. If Hollywood.com resells within the next 3 years, Hollywood Media will receive 5% of any sale that is above $10 million.

By selling off Hollywood.com, the company plans on focusing on their profitable online Broadway ticketing company which includes Broadway.com.

According to paidContent, Hollywood Media sold off two arms of their company in 2006 and 2007. This included Baseline/StudioSystems and Showtimes. Showtimes was sold to The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT) for $35 million. The company is also expected to make Hollywood.com a celebrity news site.

This was a rather odd acquisition. It is rare that a couple of members on the Board of the company buys the company that they work for. Hollywood Media is based in Boca Raton, FL.

FilmCrave.com, a social network for movie fans has just signed an exclusive advertising deal with The Hollywood.com Advertising Group,  a subsidiary of Hollywood Media Corporation (NASDAQ:HOLL).  The Hollywood.com Advertising Group has 15 years of advertising sales experience and has already launched advertisements on FilmCrave.

“We are very excited to sell ads for FilmCrave.com.  They have one of most innovative sites online.  We are proud to help generate revenue for their team,” stated Kevin Davis, President/COO of Hollywood.com. “With FilmCrave.com’s user geo-demographic information, the goal is to target individual tastes and information so that advertisers can best reach their target.”

Now that FilmCrave has an ad broker in place, they are poised to take on VC investments. 

“Having traveled this far without either funding or quality advertisements, it’s nice to have solidified revenue generation,” stated Alex Olson, co-founder of FilmCrave. “Now, we’re focused on solidifying the investment.”

FilmCrave is a destination for movie lists, movie reviews, and movie trailers.  FilmCrave is based in Lee’s Summit, MO.  FilmCrave is owned by ImaJAN Media, LLC.

Related Links:
1. FilmCrave
2. Hollywood.com Corporate Profiles