Name: Hearst CEO Steve Swartz on ESPN, Print Magazines, and More
Uploaded: 2025-03-27T16:28:00Z
Duration: 17 min 28 s
Description: Swartz also spoke about Hearst's hope for growth in its B2B, acquisitions, and healthcare businesses.

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Swartz also spoke about Hearst's hope for growth in its B2B, acquisitions, and healthcare businesses.

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Hearst CEO Steve Swartz on ESPN, Print Magazines, and More

Hello everyone, and welcome to "At Barron's." I'm Andy Serwer, and welcome to our guest, Steve Swartz, CEO of Hearst. Steve, so nice to see you.

Great to be here.

So you recently announced some results for the year for the company. Revenue of $13 billion, up 9% from the prior year. 50% of the profits of the company now come from non-consumer parts of the business. How are you getting this done? Some great news from a media company.

Well, I think the key for us is diversification, and really it's been the key for us since the company started. William Randolph Hearst started us in the newspaper business, pushed us into magazines, tried many other things, and before he died, he bought one of the first television stations, so he very much believed in it. Then my predecessor, Frank Bennack, who ran the company for 30 years, pushed us more into television, into cable television, and got us into the B2B businesses that have become so important to us. So really just a diversified mix. And a couple of our businesses really shot the lights out last year.

Yeah, the B2B part of the business 10 years ago, I understand, was 15% of the profits, now over 50%. So you've pushed the diversification a lot more during your tenure. Talk about parts of the business that are doing particularly well, Steve.

Well, I don't know that I pushed it more, but I think that that some of the businesses we bought have gotten a lot bigger, and that, yes, we are very focused, and I think the whole company, our board, everybody, our chairman, Will Hearst. Everybody is really into that we are both now a B2B business and a consumer media business. We're still very proud of our consumer media businesses. But for us last year, our Fitch group, which biggest business there is the Fitch Bond Rating business, just had a spectacular year. It was a very good bond market, but our folks just did a great job. I think they've been taking market share, their analysis I think is respected around the globe, and they had a fabulous year. And then our 35 Hearst television stations, local television stations had a great year. Yes, helped by the fact that it was a political year and they got a lot of political advertising, but we're number one in most of our markets, and it's a business that we're good at.

Yeah, you did warn a little bit about the coming year because of that big bump in television revenue from the election predictably, but I'm wondering if you're just sort of putting a low bar and hoping to over deliver for this year, or if you sincerely believe there is going to be a little bit of a tough nut to overcome.

Well, we always try to overdeliver, and we'll try to have an up year, but looking at all the various roll-ups of our budgets and stuff, I think we'll probably fall a little short there.

And I wanna ask a little bit more about Fitch, because that's something that our viewers are probably pretty familiar with, that business, and you talked about its competitors. What is the legacy of the business? When did you guys buy it? What kind of competitive set does it have? Maybe give us a little more flavor there if you could.

Well, Fitch has been around for many, many decades, perhaps more than a hundred years. But what happened is, over time, a French businessman acquired a number of rating agencies and put together a global ratings company that could compete with some of the other big ratings agencies. We bought our stake over time, starting in 2006, and I think we finally got to 100% ownership somewhere around 2018.

Right, okay. You do have a consumer side of the business, besides the 35 television stations, you have 26 daily and 52 weekly newspapers. I want to ask you about the newspaper business. That is a business in decline. There's no two ways about that, but you've actually been expanding. You bought the newspaper in Waterbury, the newspaper in Austin from Gannett. Why the heck are you guys doing that?

Well, I don't know that the business as a whole has to be in decline. Clearly print is in decline. It's regrettable. It's still my favorite way to read the newspaper, but that's just true. And I think that's mostly because advertisers have moved on to more data-centric mediums. I think there are still a lot of readers who still like print, but obviously digital is where everything's going. We've had excellent growth in our digital subscriptions, so I don't know that the business has to decline. We believe we can get growth in the newspaper business, but there's no question it is one of the tougher media businesses,.

Right, I mean, the strategy, of course, if you're replacing digital subscription revenue from print, you're going from the old line now, dollars down to nickels and dimes, and there's a model where you can pull that off?

Look, we believe so in our larger markets being able to charge. Look, the most successful newspaper, I think we all know, "The New York Times" really sets a model. Being able to get a strong both print and digital subscription price is very important. We are generally able to do that in our markets. In our largest markets, we also have a free to the consumer website to reach more of the audience than inherently the paid product is going to do. And we found that combination to work pretty well.

Oh, that's interesting, having both like that. And Texas is a big point of emphasis for your company, it looks like with newspapers as well, right?

We're very committed to Texas. We own the Houston Chronicle, the San Antonio Express News, and we recently agreed to acquire the Austin American Statesmen, but we also own a number of other newspapers there. We're in Beaumont, we're in Laredo, and we're very committed to the Texas market.

Growth state. Question about this strategy of marrying B2B with B2C. And this is, you're not alone there, Dow Jones, this company is doing it, Reuters is doing, has done it. You could argue that Bloomberg also does that. The question for you, Steve, is, does the B2B simply subsidize the B2C, or are there synergies, does it actually help the B2C, the consumer business grow, or is it just there to produce money?

Well we got into B2B organically through being in trade publishing. So it was really an outgrowth of our magazine business. Back in the day, we were publishing magazines like "Motor" for Car Repair Mechanics, or "American Druggist" for Pharmacists. And luckily for us, some of those publishers started gathering data about their industries in big books. And when the internet came along, that was the beginning of our B2B business. And it's just grown organically. As we've seen these are good businesses, we've both grown the businesses we have, and we've bought more, but I would argue these are other forms of information. They're high value information, and in digital form today, they have more wind at their back than a lot of the consumer businesses.

Right. So connectivity between the two is sort of?

We don't force that. We get our folks together on a regular basis. If they can find a win-win, that's great. But these are, look, 138 years ago we started as an information company, a newspaper. Today we're an information and entertainment company and we have consumer oriented information, newspapers, magazines, local television stations, and we have B2B information in financial services, healthcare, and transportation. And of course we have the entertainment through ESPN and A&E, our partnerships with Disney.

All right, I'm gonna go next to ESPN since you brought it up. 20% stake in that company, and that has been a huge home run for the company, for your company, Hearst, over the years, however, of course, headwinds facing that company right now. What's your take on ESPN? And I noticed that you said an exciting new DTC initiative, direct to consumer initiative, coming from them this summer.

Well, look, we couldn't have better partners than Bob Iger and Jimmy Pitaro, and what they're doing at ESPN I think is fabulous. If you look at television, sports is clearly the number property in television, and ESPN is by far the number one player in sports. And what Bob and Jimmy are doing is bringing out, later this year, a direct to consumer version of what ESPN calls the flagship product, what you can now see on ESPN or ESPN2. And that will supplement the very strong position that ESPN already has in the traditional bundle, which you can still get through linear means, or digital means, or what have you.

I'll be fascinated to see that, because I'm a big consumer of ESPN, and I use their on demand services. So to have something even more than that, I'm intrigued. So stay tuned, I guess, as they say in the business. Maybe the most high profile part of your business, though, is magazines, and it is just an incredible stable of publications. "Cosmopolitan," "Esquire," "Good Housekeeping," "Town and Country," "Harper's Bazaar," "17," "Men's Health," "Runner's World," "Road and Track." And I'm not even done with half of them, I think. I mean, how is that business doing? And I'm rooting for the titles, quite honestly, because they're part of my lifetime. And it's really kind of remarkable.

Well, thank you, and we continue to be open to buying more magazines. We bought "Motor Trend" recently to add to our strong position in automotive, and we also have a related business there called Bring a Trailer, which is the leading digital auction platform for classic cars. So we feel our consumer auto area is one of the strongest parts of our magazine business today. Look, there's no doubt, as with newspapers, the fall off in the popularity of print, I would say, once again with advertisers, probably more with readers. I still prefer to read a magazine in a tangible form. But the move to digital has been a hard one for magazines. But again, I think we can afford to be patient and to develop new business models, and that's what we're doing. And again, we're seeing some real strength in our position in automotive. Ratings and reviews have become very popular on the internet and our "Good Housekeeping" has been doing that for more than a hundred years. So, look, we're hanging in there. We are very committed to the business, but yeah, it's a tough environment for magazines.

I mean, are people still gonna be reading print, glossy magazines 10 years from now, do you think?

I think so. Perhaps not every title, and not every month. Many of our titles now sell what's called a membership, which has many benefits, including premium digital content delivered daily, and perhaps the magazine is delivered four times a year or six times a year. But there is something special about something tangible in your hands.

Right, right. Hearst is one of America's most high profile and oldest and biggest private companies. And I'm wondering, do employees own equity, and is there gonna be any change in ownership? Any IPO on the horizon, Steve?

No, there's no equity. The company is owned by a trust that Mr. Hearst set up. And no, we trustees have no plans to do anything other than continue to run the business and fulfill our mission.

And I noticed that Will Hearst, who is the grandson of William Randolph Hearst, is the chairman. Can you talk about how you work with him? How hands-on is he with the business? Do you communicate with him regularly? What's that relationship like, Steve

Will is a fabulous advisor. He's incredibly knowledgeable. He was in venture himself, and he was at one time a publisher of one of our newspapers. Incredibly knowledgeable about the media business, but also about the B2B. We have a number of assets in the aviation space. Will's a pilot, so he knows an incredible amount and is just a very important advisor to me, and to Frank, and to everybody in management.

I want to ask you a little bit about something you've done outside of Hearst, which is, you were the chairman of the AP. What advice would you give to that organization now given their high profile fight, I guess is one way to characterize it, with the White House?

Well, look, Daisy Veerasingham is the CEO there, and Gracia Martore is the chairperson, and they're both fabulous. They were colleagues when I was there, and they do a great job, and they'll get through it.

Are you surprised, there used to be these three big magazine companies, Hearst, Time Inc, and Conde Nast. How has that changed in your mind? Is it still the same as when you started your job?

Well, I mean there are just so many other digital players. There are so many impressive influencers. There are so many impressive podcasts. But certainly our colleagues at Conde Nast do a great job, and you know Barry Diller, and Joey Levin, and their colleagues at IAC with Dotdash Meredith, really seem to be doing a great job right now. We like to see strength in the category, and they seem to be having some real success.

I want to ask you about technology and of course, AI, and get your take on how that's changing how you're looking at your business.

Well, I mean, I think the sky's the limit in terms of how generative AI will get better and better. Obviously there are concerns from a public policy standpoint, but right now, from an ability to make our colleagues more effective, more efficient, the ability to create new products, there's a tremendous amount we, and not only we, but other companies, and certainly competitors of ours can and will be doing with generative AI, and we're very focused on it.

What is your strategy and what are your ambitions for this company going forward, say for the next five years?

Well, I think that certainly we want to continue to grow. We very much like the B2B category, so I think we wanna get bigger, both organically and through acquisition, in financial services through Fitch, in healthcare, where we have six companies today. We made a big acquisition last year of a company called QGenda. We wanna do more of that. And in transportation, where we're in the automotive B2B field, we're in aviation, and we're in trucking, and we'd like to see all of those get bigger. And we're still open to selective acquisitions in the consumer side, where some of our businesses are struggling. We're working hard, we have good management across the board there, and we're trying to create some new business models.

So creative acquisitions are still possible in the sector?

I think so. I think so.

You used to be a journalist for this company, Dow Jones, there's hope for us here. You were a reporter of the Wall Street Journal. Editor of Smart Money.

Yep.

And they said it can't be done, that journalists can't become CEOs. How did you do it and what have you had to learn to forget as a journalist, final question, to become CEO?

I think the skills of a journalist, being able to master a lot of information quickly, being able to communicate are very relevant. In terms of my own transition from journalist to business person, I just had a lot of mentors. I think back, Norm Perlstein, Jim Stewart, and then of course my mentor for many years, Frank Bennack. And just being in the right place at the right time.

Maybe a little bit more to it than that. Steve Swartz, CEO of Hearst, thank you so much for your time.

Great to see you.

This is "At Barron's," I'm Andy Serwer, we'll catch you next time.

Hearst CEO Steve Swartz on ESPN, Print Magazines, and More

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