Barry Diller, the chief at IAC/InterActiveCorp told investors Wednesday that killing Newsweek's print edition is a "painful process" and he has "no stars in his eyes" about its future as an online publication.
Investors questioned Diller during the third-quarter earnings call, asking how the print death of the 80-year-old newsweekly at the end of the year would affect the health of the Newsweek/Daily Beast business.
"We have no stars in our eyes," Diller said, adding that he is still considering the publication's continued losses a worthy investment. "Our plans for next year or any year forward are not going to relate in any material way to the results for Newsweek."
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"We're not projecting that it'll have X or Y subscribers," he added.
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"We have made the tough and right decision to cease printing," said Diller, who owns 80 percent of Newsweek/Daily Beast. "We know the results of that are going to dramatically decrease losses in the future — dramatically."
He said that the magazine's prospects have been improved by ending the print edition, which accounted for a $25-$30 million loss this year.
"Always in my life I have lived under a world saying, 'you lost money' and I said 'yes, we've invested money,'" Diller said. "I've had it said in an endless number of situations that, 'oh, we lost money' and I said 'no, no, no, we are investing money.' It's not as if we are taking money out and dropping it in an ocean and seeing it sink."