By 1902, The Billboard's cover was bannered with the words "Dramatic, Operatic, Burlesque, Circus, Billposters." This fairly summed up the entertainment scene of the day -- as well as the magazine's new priorities. Inside, the first two pages still covered bill posting, but beyond lay the new meat: 14 pages with departments like Stage Gossips, Tent Troopers and Street Fairs And Carnivals. The pages were crammed with long lists of fairs and attractions. Other pages carried news of show biz comings and goings, deaths and bankruptcies, openings and closings, robberies and railroad wrecks.

Thanks largely to the growth of American cities and the rail lines that linked them, the entertainment business was thriving. And while the entertainers at fairs and carnivals continued to labor in relative obscurity, the stage had created a new class of stars. Veteran performers, such as Sarah Bernhardt, John Drew, Maurice Barrymore and Maude Adams had become household names; their activities were followed closely by The Billboard.

New stars were emerging, too, and The Billboard's role in recognizing their talents was apparent. The Jan. 11, 1902, issue included an item on "the bright young comidienne (sic) Ethel Barrymore." Not yet 21, Barrymore (daughter of Maurice, sister of John and Lionel, niece of John Drew) was tabbed for stardom based on her performances, her bloodlines, and her beauty, "no small part of the actor's equipment."

Another newcomer was George M. Cohan, who adorned the cover of the Aug. 27, 1904, issue. At the age of 26, Cohan was about to star in his breakthrough musical, "Little Johnny Jones." The traveling company included Cohan's mother and father, Helen and Jerry Cohan, and "a chorus of fifty pretty girls that can sing and dance." The show included two unforgettable tunes: "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Give My Regards To Broadway."

Broadway had become the spiritual center of the theater world, but most performers lived a life of constant touring. The Billboard doggedly attempted to track their travels through Routes Ahead, a weekly listing that stretched on page after page with itineraries for tent shows, midway companies, dramatic groups, musical ensembles, minstrel troupes and burlesque acts.

At the same time, The Billboard developed the Letter-Box, a mail-forwarding service for traveling performers. A precursor of today's E-mail, the Letter-Box listed the names of performers whose mail was waiting for them at The Billboard's offices. It presented a monumental task to the publication, but the Letter-Box created a link between Billboard and the creative community that remains unbroken.

By 1904, it was clear that Bill Donaldson's gamble had paid off. The Billboard regularly was running 40 pages; it still cost only 10 cents, but with column after column of amusement advertising, it was filling the Donaldson coffers faster than the bill posters ever could.

Billboard's ad pages still were packed with pitches for "Trotting Ostriches" and "French Fencing Girls" and other oddball attractions. But amid such novelties were hints of things to come. In the issue of April 27, 1901, the Edison Manufacturing Co. began advertising its "moving picture" machine (along with lists of silent films). The same year, the Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. chose Billboard's pages to advertise its new coin-operated music machine, the Tonophone. Seven years later, a money tree was used to illustrate a full-page ad for Wurlitzer's player piano and other "automatic musical instruments with slot attachment." The message was obvious.

Advertisements for early silent films (offered for rent to exhibitors) began running regularly in The Billboard in 1906. This was the era of the nickelodeons, storefront movie theaters where average Americans could watch short films for a five-cent admission. The ads for these early movies stressed action and clarity of image. In contrast to live entertainment, there were no stars to boast of. This perhaps explains why films were all but ignored at this point in The Billboard's editorial columns. In theater, marquee value was the name of the game. Even James J. Jeffries, the world heavyweight boxing champ, had a starring role on Broadway as Davy Crockett in 1905.

Vaudeville, the other reigning form of live entertainment, also had its stars. The April 15, 1905, issue of The Billboard reported on the mime Cecelia Loftus, whose salary had risen to $3,150 per week. It was the highest salary vaudeville had known since the Four Cohans (George and family) had hit the $3,000 mark some years earlier. Other rising stars in vaudeville included W.C. Fields, Ed Wynn, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel and the monologist Will Rogers.

Billboard now billed itself as "America's Leading Amusement Review"; it still was published in Cincinnati but also boasted offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and London. Billboard correspondents reported from a seemingly infinite array of towns around America. Outdoor attractions and the booming amusement park field still provided most of the ad support, but editorially they took a back seat to theater coverage.

For the entertainment world, the biggest news of 1906 was Sarah Bernhardt's "farewell tour" of the United States (over the years, the French actress would return for many such tours). Reports on the tour regularly came in from the field. One correspondent in St. Joseph, Mo., captured the tone of the reports with this dispatch: "Owing to a wreck, the Bernhardt special failed to reach this city from Denver, Colo., until 10:30 p.m., thereby delaying the opening of the performance until 11 o'clock."

This also was the year of the San Francisco earthquake, and Billboard ran a series of reports on the quake's paralyzing impact on the Bay Area's theater scene. The June 23, 1906, issue carried a two-page spread of photos depicting 23 theaters destroyed by the quake. (One month later, Billboard reported on a new attraction at Dreamland in Coney Island, which portrayed "the full devastation" of the quake.)

During this period, Billboard also turned its attention for the first time to music publishing. Advertising for sheet music began appearing in the magazine as early as 1902. By 1905, photos of early music publishers, such as Leo Feist and Harry Von Tilzer, were featured on Billboard's cover. A May 13, 1905, item on Von Tilzer remarked: "The art of song writing is becoming as much a science as the trimming of a hat or the cutting of a suit of clothes." Later that year, the magazine introduced a Publisher's Notes column with reports from New York and Chicago. Within several years it would print entire pages of sheet music for songs available from the publishing houses.

By 1909, The Billboard also ushered in a regular department to cover moving pictures. In its brief existence, The Billboard had witnessed the fair and carnival boom and had amply documented the rise of vaudeville and legitimate theater. But as 1910 drew to a close, The Billboard declared that motion pictures had become "the most popular form of amusement for the masses that has ever been devised or invented."

New stars like Mary Pickford entered into Billboard's coverage. The English music hall comic Charles Chaplin made his first appearance in The Billboard in January 1912. Ethel Barrymore's jump to film was reported in the issue of March 12, 1914.