Ask Steve Forbes, the 62-year-old chairman and CEO of Forbes Media, the last thing that surprised him and he chuckles. “There is no end to surprises,” he says. “I just heard that Sarah Palin is writing a book and she is printing one-and-a-half million copies. I write books but I have never had one-and-a-half million printed, much less sold.”
Politics and publishing - they remain the two passions of Forbes’ career. Not content with his role as the third generation of a business publishing dynasty, he has also run for president of the US (twice failing to win the Republican nomination), and last year advised John McCain on energy and the budget.
In person, Forbes is charming and humorous. But what stands out is the simplicity and clarity with which he talks about the issues facing the media industry globally; he is not the sort of person to fill his conversation with clichés or business jargon.
Forbes is under no illusion as to the challenges facing the print industry. He says the current downturn is the most severe since the 1980s, and has been compounded by the questions posed by the rise of online. And as a four-time winner of the Crystal Owl Award, an award given to the financial journalist whose economic forecasts for the coming year prove most accurate, he is worth listening to.
Forbes argues that it is important to make a distinction between newspapers and magazines. According to him, there is a market for magazines, but newspapers or news magazines like Times and Newsweek face serious competition from online - “especially handhelds” - and he sees the pressure on them only increasing.
“The recession will not last forever but changes coming from the web will continue, and for us that means recognising that while the platform needs a lot of change the basic mission does not.”
For Forbes’ publications, that “basic mission” is to target “entrepreneurial risk-takers, investors and people who want to make positive things happen in business”.
He speaks from experience. His grandfather, BC Forbes, founded the magazine that bears the family name. Steve Forbes took over as CEO in 1990 from his father Malcolm. Since then he has launched three new publications and 10 editions of Forbes. These include editions for China, Korea and India, which sit alongside Forbes Asia.
Forbes has made progress in becoming a multiplatform operator. The online version of its flagship magazine receives up to 18 million visitors a month, he says. Its other sites provide another 20 to 25 million unique visitors. The print version of Forbes combined with Forbes Asia and the company’s ten licensee editions together reach a worldwide audience of more than 5.5 million readers.
“We started out online in 1996, but unlike others when the high-tech bubble burst in 2000 and 2001 we didn’t put our website in the deep freeze. We were very aggressive; we never thought the web was a place to put up print content, which a lot of publishers do.”
The company recently rolled out an online version of Forbes Woman, while Forbes Life was launched online last year. It also ran a video series called ‘Intelligent investing’ last year that Forbes says has done well in terms of attracting sponsors and a focused audience that “marketers and advertisers are keenly interested in”.
“That’s the thing about the web,” he says. “You can almost, like with a laser, focus on a specific audience and get a response from that audience which you can’t get from television or a print page.”
Unlike Rupert Murdoch, he believes the online business model will continue to rely on advertising. “We don’t think paid content will be a major source of revenue. It will primarily be advertising of one sort or the other. Others may succeed in doing micropricing on articles. That’s a possibility, but unless the information is specialised for a certain group of people in an industry it is going to be difficult to have a model based on paid content.”
The other opportunity for the magazine is Asia, and here the jury is out as to Forbes Media’s performance. One media agency describes Forbes Asia as “too niche for its own good”. He adds: “Fortune is a more hard-edged business magazine with a stronger business angle. Forbes is more well-known for its listings and a mix of lifestyle and business content. Forbes is strong in the US but quite weak in Asia. It is still struggling to compete with Fortune.”
However, Forbes points to the local editions as having potential. “China is doing very well. Our partner there has some very exciting ideas for growth in the future and plans for the magazine,” he says.
A real bright spot is India. A change in Indian media law allowed the magazine to enter the market with a well-known media group, Network 18, and Forbes says that there are now plans for India focusing on the web space.
Ravi Kiran, CEO for South Asia at Starcom, agrees the launch has been a success. “Forbes India is in a much better shape than Forbes Asia,” he says. “The Indian edition has been modelled after the US and the initial reviews have been very positive. It’s filling a vacant slot between Indian business titles and international titles.”
The next few years, then, should see some interesting activity for the publisher in this region. But for Forbes, as his business opens up into new markets and onto new platforms, maintaining consistency of purpose is crucial.
“The kind of mission that we have, the goals that we have in terms of serving our viewers and readers, have not changed,” he concludes. “We are working to put ourselves in a position not only to continue those services but also to ensure, in the way we generate that information, and for advertising and marketing, that we have the proper structure and approaches for the new environment.”
Steve Forbes’ CV
2000 Candidate for Republican nomination for US president
1996 Candidate for Republican nomination for US president
1990 President/CEO, Forbes Media; editor-in-chief, Forbes
This article was originally published in 22 October 2009 issue of Media.
