For the first time in Hearst's 137-year-history, more than 50% of its profits will come from professional products, not consumer-facing newspapers, magazines and TV stations, CEO Steve Swartz told Axios in an interview.

• That's up from 13% in 2013.

Why it matters: Swartz credits the company's B2B (business-to-business) investments for helping Hearst grow amid a volatile consumer advertising and subscription landscape.

• "I do believe we are a stronger publisher of newspapers and magazines — two very difficult businesses — because we have other sources of growth," he said.

By the numbers: Hearst projects it will earn $12.8 billion in top-line revenue this year, up from $11.95 billion in 2023, making it one of the largest privately-owned media businesses in the country.

The big picture: Hearst has relied on a strong balance sheet, originally stemming from consumer media, to buy its way into the B2B world.

• It has spent a whopping $14 billion on mostly B2B acquisitions over the past decade, including $3 billion in the last two years.
• Hearst has homed in on three focus areas for its B2B investments: financial services, health care and transportation. Many of those investments stemmed from Hearst's early forays into trade publishing.

State of play: Hearst's professional data and services products have helped the company offset a challenging environment for consumer media, particularly within its magazine portfolio.

• Last week, the company announced layoffs within its magazine publishing group, which houses more than two dozen brands, including Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Good Housekeeping and Harper's Bazaar.
• The general-interest magazine market is tougher than the local newspaper market right now "because you cannot rely on high subscription prices," Swartz said.
• Hearst's newspaper business, driven by major papers like the Houston Chronicle and San Francisco Chronicle, has been able to nearly offset print declines through digital subscription growth.

Yes, but: While print continues to face challenges, Hearst's local television business continues to be very profitable.

What to watch: The 22,000 company is owned by a family trust. Only five of the 13 seats on Hearst's board of trustees are reserved for descendants of the Hearst family. The rest are made up of current and former Hearst executives.

• The trust doesn't expire until the last of William Randolph Hearst's grandchildren who were alive at the time of his death have died.

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Threads, Instagram's X rival, has seen 35 million new users sign up for the platform since Nov. 1, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told me this morning.

Why it matters: Threads and rival Bluesky are competing to attract disenchanted X users following the 2024 election.

• Bluesky said last week it now has more than 20 million users. The app's usage grew more than 5x in the two weeks following the election, per Similarweb.
• Its growth has spurred inbound interest for a new investment round, just weeks after raising $15 million in Series A funding, per Axios' Dan Primack.

By the numbers: On Nov. 14, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said Threads added more than 15 million new sign-ups since the start of the month.

• According to new data, another 20 million new sign-ups have been added in the past 11 days.
• The app is now going on three months of more than 1 million sign-ups per day, Stone said.

Between the lines: Bluesky is still tiny compared to Threads and X.

• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the company's third-quarter earnings call last month that Threads had over 275 million monthly active users.
• Because Elon Musk took X private, the app isn't required to disclose its user figures, but X executives have told advertisers that the app has over 570 million monthly active users globally.

What to watch: Threads is pushing aggressively to capitalize on its newfound momentum.

• Zuckerberg on Monday said Threads is testing an option to let users decide what type of feed experience they wish to have when opening the app, a similar offering to X and Bluesky.

The bottom line: X is still the dominant social discourse app in America, but analysts believe its rivals will continue to benefit from users leaving X.

With a combined $169.5 million in their domestic box office debuts, Universal Pictures' "Wicked" and Paramount Pictures' "Gladiator II" have reawakened the box office ahead of a highly anticipated holiday season.

• Why it matters: Theaters have struggled to retain momentum this fall after a record-setting showing this summer from Disney's "Inside Out 2."

Zoom in: Although "Wicked" set a record for the biggest opening weekend for a Broadway adaptation ever, it fell slightly short of analyst expectations.

• Distributors were hoping the combined appeal of "Wicked" and "Gladiator II" would drive the same momentum as last year's infamous "Barbenheimer" summer doubleheader.
• Warner Bros.' "Barbie" and Universal's "Oppenheimer" grossed $235 million in their combined domestic debut last July.
• Those films helped establish a new precedent for the cost of marketing a box office hit.

What's next: Disney's highly anticipated sequel, "Moana II," is expected to earn a whopping $225M+ in its day-and-date global opening this holiday weekend.

• The Mouse House hopes the animated film can top the existing domestic box office record for the five-day Thanksgiving weekend that it set in 2019 with $125 million for "Frozen II."

The big picture: The movie business is still reeling from the combined impact of the pandemic and the dual writers and actors strikes last year.

• Year to date, the domestic box office is down 27.7% compared to the same period in 2019.

Comcast doesn't plan to be acquisitive after it spins off its cable networks, an executive familiar with its plans told Axios. 

State of play: Instead, the company plans to focus on organic growth for its remaining properties, which include its cable and broadband businesses, as well as a streamlined NBCUniversal that will focus on parks, movies, broadcast and streaming. 

• Comcast will continue to invest in sports rights and funding big-budget films for NBCU, but it has no plans to expand its remaining portfolio at this time, the source said.

The big picture: Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have considered spinning off their cable assets, but ultimately backed down.

• Comcast feels confident in its spinoff plan, describing it to investors as "playing offense," not just because of the strength of its cable portfolio compared to its rivals, but also because it won't hurt its streaming ambitions.

By the numbers: The collection of cable networks it is spinning out generated approximately $7 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, Comcast said.

• But those networks only drive around 2% of viewership to Peacock.
• Noticeably missing from Comcast's divestiture portfolio was Bravo, which contributes significantly to viewership on Peacock, the source said.

What to watch: Elon Musk and other right-wing voices have teased efforts to buy MSNBC from Comcast. The network is not for sale, the source said.

• But CNN's Brian Stelter reports that one benevolent billionaire with liberal bona fide "has already reached out to acquaintances at MSNBC to express interest in buying the cable channel."

A slow denigration of press freedoms in Israel has been supercharged by the Israel-Hamas war.

Zoom in: The Israeli Cabinet on Sunday unanimously agreed to sanction Haaretz, the country's oldest newspaper, citing its critical coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

• Press freedom advocates slammed the move, arguing it's part of a broader effort by the Israeli government to silence voices critical of its war in Gaza.

State of play: Israel's Cabinet approved a proposal by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi that calls for all government staffers and staffers of state-owned companies to end communications with Haaretz and stop advertising and subscription purchases with the paper.

• The proposal came in response to critical coverage of the war by Haaretz and an October speech by its publisher, Amos Schocken, who suggested sanctioning the Israeli government for violating international law.
• In a post on X, Haaretz slammed the move, writing, "Like Putin, Erdoğan, and Orbán, Netanyahu is trying to silence a critical, independent newspaper. Haaretz will not balk and will not morph into a pamphlet that publishes messages approved by the government and its leader."

Zoom out: Karhi has been pushing government decisions and bills that will benefit the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 by covering some of its debts and giving it other regulatory benefits.

• He is pushing another move to dramatically cut the budget of the public broadcaster KAN, which has published several big stories critical of the government in recent months.

The big picture: The new measure is part of a growing effort by the Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to silence press deemed critical of its war efforts.

• In May, police officers raided Al Jazeera's Jerusalem bureau and pulled the network off the air in Israel after the Israeli parliament passed a measure forcing the closure of the Qatari-owned news outlet's local office.
• That law empowers Israel's communications minister to take action against any foreign media network that it can prove poses a national security risk.

What to watch: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has created the modern blueprint for how world leaders can starve critical outlets and support favorable ones by withholding or granting government advertising dollars.

Ad tech, marketing tech and digital content deals are surging to the highest point since the first half of 2022 amid a comeback in digital ad spend.

By the numbers: M&A activity across ad tech, martech and digital content was up 13% in Q3 of 2024 compared to the prior quarter and up 20% compared to Q3 of 2023, per data from Luma Partners.

• For ad tech, specifically, M&A volume was up 118% year over year and up 26% quarter over quarter.

Driving the news: Video platform Brightcove agreed to be taken private Monday by Italian tech company Bending Spoons for $233 million, 14 years after it first went public.

• Notable Q3 deals included Equativ-Kamino Retail, Outbrain-Teads, Publicis-Influential, Optimizely-Netspring and Ziff Davis-CNET.
• Deal flow has continued to heat up in Q4 with Zeta-LiveIntent, Mediaocean-Innovid, Connatix-JW Player and Samba TV-Semasio.

What we're watching: Private equity firms who backed ad tech during a frothy 2021 market are eyeing exits.

• Buyers have eyed Integral Ad Science for a take-private deal, per recent reports. Criteo also has long been viewed as a potential target.

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DirecTV terminated its planned acquisition of rival Dish Network on Thursday night following bondholders' rejection of a debt swap that the deal depended on.

Why it matters: A merger between the two struggling satellite TV providers was seen as essential to the survival of both.

• Both have lost nearly half of their subscriber base since 2013, which is considered the high point of the pay-TV era.

Flashback: This is the second time a DirecTV-Dish merger failed.

• The two tried to combine in 2002 in a $26 billion deal, but it was blocked by regulators in the George W. Bush administration over concerns it would reduce competition.
• Those same competition concerns likely would not have been a factor this time, given the decline in the satellite TV business.

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