Interview: Steve Waldman, CEO BeliefNet: Putting Faith In Video Expansion

Steve Waldman’s decision to sell faith-focused community site BeliefNet to News Corp (NYSE: NWS). last December wasn’t an easy one. Speaking on a panel at the Media Dealmakers Summit in New York, Waldman, the site’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, said some shareholders needed convincing. “The question for me and our board was, ‘How are we doing now and could we do much better in the belly of a much larger media company?” BeliefNet’s board and investors had different ways of looking at the question. Some wondered whether the deal was coming to early in the life of the business; others too late. A number of the company’s existing shareholders were employees, who held BeliefNet stock in return for accepting minimum wage as the company restructured itself after coming out of bankruptcy in 2002. “Ultimately, coupling all the different interests and time horizons people had [related to the company stock], that made it a good deal to sell.”

Waldman and I spoke after the session about how the integration is working out and the spiritual issues site’s plans for expanding its video offerings. More after the jump. The audio of our conversation can be downloaded here, or streamed below.

Getting together: The degree to which News Corp. gives its subsidiaries free reign is debatable. But Waldman said News Corp. presented BeliefNet, which is housed in the Fox Digital Media unit, with a “perfect combination of independence and support.” It’s still the early stages of the relationship – Waldman said most of his time is devoted to quotidian tasks such as transferring benefit plans. But on the content level, one of the first steps will involve video distribution and ad sales. Waldman: “As an independent company, we were somewhat hobbled – by cost constraints mostly

Comments have been disabled for this post