In a move that I am still sitting open mouthed gawking at as I report it, IAC, the media conglomerate run by Barry Diller has elected to shift the direction of The Daily Beast. How? Well they are handing it over to former Disney and Hearst executives. That’s right Dismal Disney and one of their major media partners Hearst are once again indirectly shaking up another media outlet. Well Sort of.
Ben Sherwood via HWASpeakersBureau
Ben Sherwood, a former ABC Television president will receive a huge amount of equity in the Daily Beast and serve as publisher and CEO. Joanna Coles will also receive an equal amount of equity to become the chief creative and content officer. All told, under the terms of the deal, the pair of Coles and Sherwood will own about half the equity in the venture with IAC retaining majority ownership control.
Ultimately this fills a void left by Heather Dietrick as she exited about 4 months ago to pursue a better opportunity at Outside Interactive. This of course says a lot about the state and future of The Daily Beast. In other words it’s not looking good. Plainly, the digital media landscape has stalled so significantly, with an apathetic and fickle audience, that it was fine to leave the outlet rudderless for many months while looking to foist responsibility onto someone or someone’s who don’t have enough foresight to read the rotted tea leaves.
Joanna Coles via Today YouTube
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Barry Diller is considered a smart media guy and walking away in part from yet another failing business model at least allows him to focus on the success. Yet this also is a significant pivot as the previous plan for The Daily Beast was a merger with Ankler Media last year. Taking what works and selling the rest seems to be a forte of Barry Diller’s, so I imagine he saw the future for Ankler as limited and elected to keep The Daily Beast as a rehab project under someone else’s efforts.
For what it’s worth, Sherwood is no slouch. He worked his way up and out of Disney with impeccable timing and thinks he sees another opportunity in The Daily Beast. Parenthetically Sherwood stated, “Yes, everything feels upside down right now with busted business models and transformative technology. With so much disruption — or maybe because of it — we believe this is the ideal entrepreneurial opportunity to deliver on The Beast’s insurgent promise.”
Coles, for her part stated things a bit more directly summing it all up with, “We’re bringing The Beast back to its rebel roots and will build on its beloved DNA to make it even beastier.”
Barry Diller via CNBC Television YouTube
Of course, the likely outcome is The Daily Beast manages to survive just long enough that others around it collapse and some value in the brand is retained. It may even find itself as fodder for sale as Diller tries to revamp his empire once more as all his digital efforts seem to be losing value right now. Looking at the direction of the entire media landscape currently, my advice to these two newly crowned leaders at The Daily Beast is to figure out how to make this thing work or all that equity will mean absolutely nothing.
Currently, The Daily Beast is in the red. Axios reports, “The outlet is not profitable and last year was on track to lose tens of thousands of dollars, a person familiar with the company’s finances said.”
What do you see in the future for The Daily Beast?
The Daily Beast is way too toxic to be profitable.
Agreed. It’s a sinking ship that is someone else’s Problem…