Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the Ice House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision in global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSC an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism. Right here, right now at the NYSC and at ICE's exchanges and clearinghouses around the world. And now welcome inside the Ice House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
My wife and I went to sleep on the night of Friday, May 12th tied up in knots. She had spent the prior couple of hours watching the Ticketmaster and StubHub apps for minute fluctuations in the cost of tickets for Taylor Swift's Eras tour the night at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. It would make my 15-year-old daughter's year and perhaps her life to date to see her idol in person. The variations in the purchase price didn't deviate that much, and in all cases they were steep and we went to bed pretty frustrated. But can you put a price on happiness? The next morning, Saturday, May 13th, we took the plunge. It's weird in today's world to have a large chunk of monetary value change hands in the press of a finger, but in an instant, I was the owner of two tickets to Taylor's show that very night, part of the $4 billion in revenue generated by the tour. My daughter and her BFF Luelle dressed in two separate eras of Taylor chic, adorned themselves in friendship bracelets charged their phones for maximum video making and loaded into the Acura for the drive to Philadelphia.
I dropped them off a couple of hundred yards from the stadium at Citizens Bank Park, then headed to South Philly to grab a cheesesteak at Pat's in a quick pilgrimage to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. And a couple of hours later I was back at the parking lot of the Lincoln, thinking I was just there to retrieve my daughter and her friend from a concert. But then to my astonishment, I found myself in the midst of 20,000 other young people dancing on the asphalt who didn't even have tickets. They just found love and warmth in each other's presence and the sounds wafting over the grandstand. I couldn't help dancing along with them for nearly 90 minutes of pure unadulterated joy amid what for many has been a harrowing year.
There's another one of my idols, Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to quote her here, "There's just something so mightily American in Taylor Swift's great year. Am I getting carried away? Oh, yes I am. And yet I think isn't it great that somebody's shown such excellence, you just get carried away?" And Peggy went on. "If it's real, it adds up to the sum total of love in the world, literally increases its quantity and the love enters the air and the world breathes it in and for a moment becomes better." I couldn't agree more. A couple of hours ago, Time revealed that Taylor Swift is the Person of the Year beating out a long list of luminaries on the shortlist. And in a minute we're going to be talking to my friend Jessica Sibley, Time's CEO, who, by the way, just rang our opening bell to celebrate the new issue about the process, the meaning and the business behind the annual honor, both for Taylor and Time itself. That's all coming up right after this.
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Josh King:
Welcome back inside the Ice House. Remember to subscribe wherever you listen, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts if you would. Now, for the last 100 years, Time has been a staple on America's newsstands and its breakfast tables, a driver of the cultural conversation from FDR to LBJ to Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And whether readers found their issues at kiosks, at the train stations, convenience stores, libraries, or grocers, Time has always occupied an indelible corner of our national psyche. Founded by Hotchkiss and Yale classmates, Henry Luce and Briton Hadden in 1922, Time released its first issue on March 3rd, 1923. Fast-forward 13 years after that first issue featuring the former Speaker of the House, Joseph G. Cannon, to the year in 1926. That's when Mr. Luce created LIFE magazine, which helped the business grow and ultimately led to the construction of Midtown Manhattan's famed Time Life building at 1271 Avenue of the Americas in 1959.
Five years later, 1964, Time Inc. commenced trading here at the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TIME. And now, almost 60 years after its stock initially went public, as we sit here in the library of the NYSE, Time's stock price is no longer found on trading floor tickers. Today it's a private company owned by Marc Benioff, CEO and founder of Salesforce, that's NYSE ticker symbol CRM, and led by our guest today Jess Sibley. Jess has been CEO of Time for just over a year now. She's previously spent over eight years at Forbes and had also prior experiences at Condé Nast, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek. Jess, thanks so much for joining us inside the Ice House.
Jess Sibley:
Thank you, Josh. It's so wonderful to be here, especially today.
Josh King:
How did it feel going up there with Lynn Martin ringing the bell, this has to be the craziest day for you. You're looking at your phone, it's exploding. Walk me through this day so far for you.
Jess Sibley:
Well, I think you said it best for Taylor Swift and this moment to recognize and celebrate everything that she's accomplished, not just this year, but in her career. She's 33, she's so happy and she's really crushed it. And that's not without a lot of setbacks. She's had a lot of success and she's certainly on a huge comeback. And right now, it's been a challenging year, there's a lot of turmoil globally. And just to have positivity in everything that she represents, it's such a wonderful day to celebrate her and everything that she's done to bring joy around the world.
Josh King:
We're going to talk a lot more about her, but about Jess, I don't know, what time did you go to sleep last night? What did you think was going to happen today and how has the first couple of hours of it unfolded?
Jess Sibley:
Well, we probably didn't go to sleep much last night. And Sam Jacobs, our editor-in-chief, was on the Today Show who took the exclusive leading up to this moment and the reveal. We have Sam Lansky who wrote the article and sat down with Taylor. I should mention that she hasn't done an interview in over four years, as well as a photo shoot, a live photo shoot, and she trusts Time. She trusted us. She trusted Sam and Sam to tell her story. I'd encourage your listeners to go to time.com and read it because she shared a lot of things in the interview that she hasn't shared publicly before.
Josh King:
We all know shards of the process of Person of the Year, the person most influencing the world for good or ill, sometimes it would be a person on the shortlist like Xi Jinping, who isn't going to trust time to an interview or a photo shoot. In the case of someone who's a cultural icon, who understands perchance the benefit of working with Sam and Sam and you, what is the process of explaining that she may or may not be the Person of the Year and may or may not be on the cover. Therefore, you didn't do this interview yesterday. You've had some of these assets on pixels for a while. Now, how does it fold?
Jess Sibley:
Time Person of the Year is one of our most important platforms. As you mentioned, we've been doing this since 1927, over 95 years, and it's something that we talk about all year long up until today, literally, because the world can change overnight. And we started to talk to Taylor Swift and her team in the fall and there are no guarantees and we make that transparent and clear during the entire process.
Josh King:
So Jess, you're no stranger than New York Stock Exchange. You've told me how you used to call in Dick Grasso and pass to ad sales roles. You were here to ring the opening bell earlier this year celebrating Time's 100th anniversary. One year down for you, whirlwind or trial by fire.
Jess Sibley:
Both. It's been professionally and personally the most difficult demanding year in my career, but also the most exciting and rewarding. And as you mentioned, Time is a private investment. Our co-owners and co-chairs are Marc and Lynn Benioff and I work really closely with both of them. And I've done so much and learned so much. I've literally traveled the world for Time this year and I'll tell you that everyone has a Time story and everyone wants to share their Time story with me. And it's just been so humbling and so exciting to represent Time, to be the CEO of this storied brand, especially this year in our 100th year, our centennial, and to have this huge moment here at the New York Stock Exchange for Taylor Swift.
And I've been coming here my entire career. I've been working with the executive team, to have Lynn Martin here, to have you, Josh King, here is just a coming home moment for me to have fearless girl who's been outside here feeling very fearless early days in my career, coming here to meet with Bob Zito and Dick Grasso and many of the other incredible executives that have led this institution. And to see Time and our three covers, the first time we've ever done three covers for Person of the Year, the first time we've ever recognized an artist. It's just amazing. And I have to say, as much as we admire and respect everything that Taylor Swift has done and you tell the story about getting tickets and the concert, she's an incredible songwriter and performer and artist, and her work ethic is just remarkable and unprecedented. And what I'm excited about and what I liked to talk about a little is how she's a CEO.
Josh King:
Exactly. I was going to ask about that.
Jess Sibley:
How's she's a business leader and what she's done to drive the economics this year, as much as we discuss and debate who's going to be Person of the Year, it's clear it's Taylor Swift and it's a great choice.
Josh King:
We'll talk about that a little bit because you brought a lot of the statistics up in Siebert Hall earlier with Lynn Martin, and there was some great symbolism too, to have our event. We did the 100th anniversary event in our beautiful boardroom, we did Person of the Year in Siebert Hall. It was a reality because we had one of our other listed companies, Coca-Cola, NYSE ticker symbol KO, is planning an investor day and they're blowing out the boardroom, getting ready, but very appropriate to be standing in the room dedicated to a woman who's the first female member of the New York Stock Exchange and built up an amazing business there. You talked about Taylor as CEO, Peggy Noonan wrote about it a little bit, but some of the numbers about how not just ticket revenue is driving the economy, but for instance, Travis Kelce's shirt sales have increased by 400% and that's a boon to Nike, NYSE ticker symbol NKE.
Jess Sibley:
That's right. And what's so exciting about person of the year and having Lynn and everything that you just mentioned and ringing the opening bell, we started as Man of the Year. Again, it was really smart editors during a slow news cycle toward the end of the year when people weren't necessarily focused on the news, they created news and looked at who during the year had the most impact, who had the most headlines. And yes, for better and in some cases for worse. And when you drill down and see the stats on Taylor, it's unprecedented. So a couple I wanted to share that are in the story, you mentioned jersey's, 400% increase in Travis Kelce's jersey, but also look at the new audiences that the NFL has reached and Kansas City, people that are going to that city that had never been there before. But when you look at her Eras concert, $4 billion in sales. And you mentioned you bought tickets, the average ticket holder spent $1,300, rooms, hotel rooms increased $200 million and $4 billion for the GDP overall.
I mean, that's just remarkable. And Peggy Noonan wrote some of the statistics in the Wall Street Journal, and when you look at that, the local economy of LA garnered 300 million in revenue just in the week that she performed and 3,000 new jobs were created. But she gave back, she gave bonuses to everyone that worked on her tour, 55 million. And wow, that's a Super Bowl, but over 50 Super Bowls in 20 cities, which is why politicians and prime ministers around the world are asking her to please come to their countries to perform because of the economic impact she's had. And the friendship bracelets, a big thing, I'm sure your daughter's enjoyed those, craft sales went up 500%. I could go on and on. It's just unbelievable and nothing like we've ever seen before.
Josh King:
It really does ask an honest question, what would you ever do for 2024 that could be an encore, if you go back to sort of the more typical persons of the year selections, you had many of them on the shortlist this year, King Charles, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Jay Powell. You talked about Sam's appearance on the Today Show and Sam's article eventually after Taylor entrusted herself to you both for the photo shoot and for the interview, but bring us into the Time offices for the rolls-up-your-sleeves moment as you are going through the shortlist and talking through these shortlist people, the puts and takes and how you finally landed on the decision.
Jess Sibley:
Yeah, as I said, it's something that we spend all year on, we take very seriously. We internally discuss, debate. We get submissions from around the world. Everyone's got an opinion. It's the talk of any cocktail conversation. We also have done polls in the past and third parties do polls. I think the Today Show did one and clearly Taylor was the standout. There were no shortages of options this year of those that have made an impact. And sometimes it's a concept, sometimes it's an idea. It's not always a person. We were really excited to recognize Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI and have a conversation with him as CEO of the Year. So we've expanded Person of the Year. We recognize Messi and what he's done for the sport of soccer, particularly in America as Athlete of the Year. And we had Alex Newell as Breakout Person of the Year and everything that Alex has done performing in here on Broadway for Shucked.
Josh King:
Absolutely. And maybe at some point, a CEO of the Year might've been Marc Benioff, but you mentioned the investment of Marc and Lynn in Time. And he bought the company in 2018, I saw him at your Time 100 conference at Jazz at Lincoln Center and also the Time 100 Next event a couple of weeks ago. I've seen some of the programs that have been introduced to Time focused on climate change. When you were offered the opportunity of CEO, what vision did he express for you and how do you want to see the Time brand grow over the next five, 10, 15 years?
Jess Sibley:
Look, Marc is one of the most incredible CEOs of our lifetime. I'm saying not top 10 or top five, like top three. And he has fundamentally changed what it is to be a CEO today. And everything that he's done at Salesforce also his 1-1-1 platform. So the opportunity to partner with him and to learn from him as a first time CEO at Time was something that I took very seriously. He asked me for the vision as opposed to telling me his vision. I've done this my entire career, it's the only thing I've done is traditional legacy media. You mentioned in the intro some of the venerable most incredible resilient, well-known, recognized brands that I've had the opportunity to work at like Bloomberg, the New Yorker Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and it's what I've done. It's coming into an incredible, trusted brand that does need transformation, innovation, reinvigoration, that needs to solidify its future for the next 100 years.
And a lot of that transformation is what I do and have a track record of success in the past. And it's all about having the brand which we have, but also the trusted journalism. And Marc and Lynn believe in our mission and our purpose and it means so much. It was so wonderful to see our red border just everywhere here today and the covers and the display and the Time red logo, and it really stands for something that's really meaningful and matters, I would argue more so than ever before. A lot of the newcomers have had challenges. And again, as I mentioned, traveling the world for Time, hearing all of these incredible stories as a business, as a brand, the journalism that we do is at the heart of it. And there are very few, if any, brands that if they disappeared, would anyone care, would anyone matter? Would it matter?
And with Time, a hundred percent, I would say it does. With that said, media is a really difficult and challenging industry and we need to accelerate our digital transformation and we need to reach important new audiences. And we've done that. We've done that all year. We have new models, we've launched new initiatives, strategic partnerships, and we have the largest global audience in our history at 120 million. So well beyond just what we're known for, which is Time Magazine. We still love our magazine and people love reading time every week in that format, but we're on every platform now. We've expanded to TikTok and WhatsApp and a FAST channel, which we launched just this past month. We took down our paywall. So in April at the Time 100 Gala, I made the bold and courageous decision to make Time available for anyone everywhere in the world for free. And News Literacy, we have Time for Kids, getting trusted information, reliable, given what's gone on in the world, everyone deserves that opportunity.
Not everyone has access and affordability to trusted information, and it really was not just a purpose mission decision, but also the right business decision. And that's a really big part of what I've done my whole career coming from the revenue side, coming from the commercial side, which is to make sure that we have a sustainable, profitable business that can support the journalism. That's what we do. That's what I do. It's fundamental to my beliefs that if we can have great partners, we can do great journalism and reach new audiences, especially young ones. I'm so proud of our editor-in-chief, Sam Jacobs. We named Sam as editor in April. He's the youngest editor in our hundred-year history. He just had a birthday, so he's 38, first millennial, and he comes with that mindset. 45% of our audience is 35 and younger, and I'm really proud of that. We're reaching more women and we're reaching more diverse audiences. And we have to continue on this journey.
It's been my vision. I've spoken about it publicly. Marc and Lynn asked me, "What would you do? What would you do at Time? What would you do with the business?" They shared a lot of information with me. You're a writer. I've learned about you. Josh and I listened to your podcast and you've talked to me about your Time story and a lot of your learnings around writing come from reading Time.
Josh King:
[inaudible 00:22:04].
Jess Sibley:
As your chief communication officer position here, and any writer, I looked at my screen and it was blank and where do I start, and I wrote Time 3.0. And so we have seven priorities and mid-year, Marc is a big priority person and he's like, "Are these still your priorities?"
Josh King:
Yeah.
Jess Sibley:
So six months in and I looked at them and I was like, "They're still the priorities." And he goes, "Are they in priority order?" "You know what? They're not." So I reprioritize and I'm really proud that we've achieved those seven leading priorities and goals this year. And I think by the time I actually stepped foot in the door, first day at time, Time 3.0 was version seven, seven pages long. And so now I'm working on a next year, which I can't give away right now and sort of where we're headed.
Josh King:
We'll have you back. Thank you for bringing the paywall down because although I'm not that sort of younger demographic reading, I love going back into the vault and journeying back a hundred years whenever I feel like it. And it is such a joy both to see the layout and the photography and the words the way they're constructed. And to see how Sam Jacobs is evolving the creation and manufacture of those words. I know it's a very tough time in the media industry. Just this week, Condé Nast had deep cuts at both Vanity Fair and uniquely at the New Yorker. What are some of the ways in which you can sort of navigate this difficult puzzle of how to make money in 2023, 2024, chart a course of the future and look at these storied names that you spent a lot of time with under the Condé Nast umbrella that you think they would never sort of trim down the editorial side of New Yorker and yet they have?
Jess Sibley:
Yeah, it's been a challenging year for media overall. For Time, it's about recalibrating our business, it's about diversifying our business and it's about efficiency and making sure that everyone at the company is essential and that we're leaning in on efficiency and driving our business forward. A couple of examples, we are really pivoting to a B2B company. We love our consumers. We want them to be able to access Time. I think it's really important today with disinformation and misinformation that Time can be available and you don't have to hit a paywall or give up all of your data to appreciate and enjoy our journalism. What we've done is a few things as we lean into being a B2B company, we are partnering with the biggest global blue chip brands, that are household names, that have healthy budgets that want to partner with us. And we're doing that with branded content, with traditional type of advertising.
And we've grown our events business significantly. We went from a company that did two events in a year to seven and globally this year we're over 27 events, and some of them are Time 100 and our biggest platforms and tent poles and climate and AI, and some of them are custom events where we partner just with a company. I would say in my career, I've been attending events, hosting, sponsoring, speaking, executing, I've never seen anything, and I'm not going to say it's pre-COVID levels, it's historic levels that people want to be with other humans. Even with AI and even with all of this technology and every way that we can do business remotely, they want to be together. They want to create conversations, network, build relationships, and that's just one of the most exciting parts of our business and the ability to drive that and do that for our marketing partners.
We are also doing a lot of new things at Time with a lot of strategic partners. We built a content to commerce business. And again, rooted in our trusted journalism, where you can go to time.com for those most important personal, buying decisions, whether it's insurance, whether it's seasonal products, gift guides, things like that. We've launched Time 100 Voices where we have the most important thought leaders around the world writing exclusively for Time. It's a new business model, it's a new editorial model. We launched with Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Ariana Huffington, Angelina Jolie, Lindsey Vonn, Ray Dalio, Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Jose Andres, I could go on and on. But we're really proud of what we're doing. And it's pretty simple in media. You have the brand, you build the content, you drive the content or the journalism, which drives the audiences. That marketing partners advertising has so many formats and so many different connotations, but ultimately they want to be surrounded by that incredible content and engage in audiences that are meaningful that matter. So we're really proud of that.
Josh King:
Let's use that to bridge a little bit to advertising itself and talking about legacy media and your career, and you began it as a media planner at Foote, Cone & Belding, which is a subsidiary of Interpublic Group, NYSE ticker symbol IPG. So Jess, after graduating from Hobart and William Smith, what initially drew you to this world?
Jess Sibley:
Wow, you're going way back. I am a sort of serial extrovert. I love people. I grew up as an only lonely child. And I had a father, may he rest in peace, who had an incredible career in advertising in sales at Forbes for many years, and he just gave me a world and a life that my mother and I could never have dreamed of. And I always admired that and looked up to that. And really, I also felt that, aging myself and my career, I needed to be tied to numbers. I needed to be tied to performance because there was no subjectivity in that. And I also could control my destiny. I felt like if I could drive business, I could control my professional career, my financial career, but I couldn't get into sales because it was like, "Well, you don't have any sales experience, so you can't get into sales." Well, how do I do this?
I also have always been self-made, and I really wanted a career so I could just make sure that I always paid my bills and didn't have to ask anyone for money ever. And I refused to graduate college without a job. So I hustled while I was a senior at Hobart. And I figured that if I could get a job in advertising on the buy side, on the media side, I'd have a chance to potentially one day cross the desk. But I'd meet everyone in sales, everyone would come as a media buyer, media planner and give me time. And I would learn at least by meeting with individuals across the desk, sort of the good, the bad and the ugly. And I chose that path. I wound up starting cold calling in rural Maryland, and door-to-door selling in rural Maryland, as I mentioned, local magazines. And I started from there and just haven't looked back ever since.
Josh King:
This industry represented by men like Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, had historically been a male-dominated field. You even mentioned this morning that the issue was Times Man of the Year until 2000, if you can believe that. And while I would say just from the outside looking in, industry has become much more diverse, a large portion of your over 30 careers come when that wasn't necessarily the case. From your observations, how has the field changed as newsrooms and sales teams grow with differing opinions and differing experiences? Even the photographers who shot Taylor for your issue were a husband and wife team.
Jess Sibley:
Yeah, world-famous photographers. It has changed. And working at incredible media companies like Bloomberg and Dow Jones, there were most times, not just many, where I was the only woman at the table or in the room. And I always looked at that really positively and that I was at the table and in the room, and that was amazing. And I never felt uncomfortable about that at all. And I've brought women along with me. Just in the last year, Josh, our women leaders, we're about to put out our statistics at the company, went from 46% to 60%. So I'm really proud of that. And there are incredible women leaders that are running media companies, that are running newsrooms today, and so many that I know closely and that I admire, Rashida Jones, Meredith Levine, Emma Tucker. And it's changed. It's changed necessarily. I still would like to see more women as CEOs for NYSE listed companies.
Josh King:
Sure, absolutely.
Jess Sibley:
So when you look at the Fortune 500, out of 500 companies, it's like 10%. I think globally it's even lower, and that's at an all time high. So there's a lot more capable women that should be at the helm as a chairman, CEO or members of boards.
Josh King:
You alluded to the good and bad and ugly of the advertising world and the media world. And there's a scene, I don't know if you've seen it in the third season of The Morning Show where UBA News Division President Stella Bach, played by Greta Lee, has to seem to drink some ad buyers under the table to make a key sale after network up fronts. On the buy side, what's the state of the ad industry today? You thanked two of your big partners today, both Macallan and American Family Insurance.
Jess Sibley:
Yeah. For us, we have ongoing top-to-top conversations, relationships with our marketing partners. I think that's really important that we are not in the business as we pivot to a B2B company of just selling inventory and selling banners and ads on our site. We want to create incredible programs in partnership at the highest level, chief marketing officers, CEOs to help drive their business. And I think American Family Insurance is a great example of that in the partnership that we've created, Dreamer of the Year. And I'm really proud of that work. And again, we work directly with the top executives, both on the agency and at the customer side, client side. We do that with Hans Vestberg, the CEO of Verizon, and many others. And that's really, really important, so that we're not just-
Josh King:
It was great to hear Hans at the Time 100 Next event and great to have his perspective as well.
Jess Sibley:
Yeah. And he and I work together. Everything that he's done with digital equity, digital inclusivity, and making sure that through the World Economic Forum and the Edison Alliance, the commitment that he's made, not just as chairman and CEO of Verizon, but as an incredible world leader with a really big platform, that accessibility to affordable technology is critical. It's critical around the world. Not just for education or news literacy, but if there's a climate event, if things aren't going well, you need help and you need to be able to access technology to do that. So he really inspired me. Those are the kinds of things that we're doing. We're going into high impact, high value, not just selling inventory because people are coming to time.com. We're excited about time.com today because a lot of people are coming to time.com and that's the Taylor effect. I think there's going to be a lot new issues being sold and subscriptions.
Josh King:
Are you looking at minute-by-minute sales numbers because you got this sort of visual code that people can sort of click on their phone and just buy any one or all three of these issues, how does that work?
Jess Sibley:
Yeah, I'm really excited to introduce Flowcode. So Tim Armstrong, who's an incredible media icon, I was introduced to Flowcode actually at Cannes when I spoke on Shelley Zalis' Female Quotient Manel. So this was not a panel, it was a manel, it was all men. I was the moderator and Jim Norton was on the panel and he introduced me to Flowcode. And it's really a QR code, but it's branded and it's beautiful. And we worked together. He didn't know who was Person of the Year and he didn't really know what was going to happen, but he trusted me. And I wanted to do something, as I said, new and innovative. So we branded this beautiful QR code in the Time red and black with Person of the Year logo. You can take the QR code, hold it up to outside here on the billboard.
Josh King:
It may be outside our building right now as we speak.
Jess Sibley:
Yeah, take your phone if we show it on television. And then of course in our magazine, you just take your phone, it'll take you to a link, you can buy one issue. So we have three different covers, and the Swifties, I think they want all three, you can buy all three, you can buy one and you can also subscribe. So I'm really excited about that. And I think the Taylor effect will drive some new audiences to Time that hadn't recognized us before.
Josh King:
You and I are sitting in the library, we're looking at the issue now. We've talked about Sam Lansky's interview with Taylor. It just popped this morning, so I have not yet got to read it in full. There's so much more though to Time. One of branches of the business is Time Studios. It's seen a lot of success since its inception in 2020, but over the last few months it's undergone quite a couple of leadership changes. Most notably Dave O'Connor took over as its president this past November. How will Dave's coming on help Time Studios and what's your vision for that part of the business?
Jess Sibley:
Yeah, we're really excited about Time Studios, our TV and film division. It's about storytelling, which is what we do at Time. We spotlight the incredible individuals, the incredible ideas that are changing and really building a better future. And in new formats, documentaries, docu series. We're having a really big week. We have the premiere of US soccer. So at the World Cup we got exclusive access to the team, and we had an all-female production crew, Rebecca Gitlitz as director and executive producer. The premiere will be on Sunday, the Paris Theater. We're also having a premiere in LA. And we've invited some of the team members to join us at the Time Person of the Year: A Year in Time Gala at the Plaza Hotel where we'll show a trailer. And it's going to premiere on Netflix, it's a four-part series. So we're really excited about that. And we see so much more opportunity based in not just Time's own IP, but those that really trust us and want to tell their story with us.
Josh King:
As we're on this medium of podcasts, I have to ask you how your venture into podcasting is going with the weekly cover.
Jess Sibley:
Yeah, we love our podcast. It's Person of the Week.
Josh King:
Person of the Week. Person of the Week, sorry.
Jess Sibley:
Yeah. Person of the Year, we do a weekly podcast and we have a great team that's doing that. We love audio. We think that that is a really great format where we're working to get every article, every piece that we post translated and also in an audio version.
Josh King:
Absolutely. I consume so many well-written articles through audio, whether it's Apple News or the Times audio app and what you guys are doing. But I think more people are trying to consume as much as they can on the go and like to hear it not read by an autonomous voice, but by a real theatrical actor, a person really knows how to put the Time speak into human voice. So as we wrap up, Jess, each year time sends a message with its choice for Person of the Year. And if you look back to last year, the selection in 2022 was Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the spirit of Ukraine. I want to listen to what time reporter Simon Shuster, who's been on the ground in Ukraine, had to say about last year's selection and the message that was sending through that voice.
Simon Shuster:
The situation on the ground is painful and tragic, but I think what a lot of the coverage misses is the positivity and the resilience that Ukrainians show. Even when there's a blackout, even when there are missile strikes, people continue to try to go about their daily lives. Not give into despair, not give into depression, to keep living. [foreign language 00:38:50].
Josh King:
So Jess, you were just in your first couple weeks at time when the Zelenskyy selection was made, so you had the whole year, as we've talked about a couple times, to watch this process unfold. If Simon's message was what was trying to be sent through Zelenskyy's selection, if you had to sum it all up now, what's the message being sent with Taylor's selection?
Jess Sibley:
Well, to have a woman who's taken control and ownership of her business, of her career. She's a CEO to me. She's not just changed the rules, but she's invented them. She's super honest and warm and down-to-earth and genuine. And she has had a lot of setbacks and it hasn't been easy. And she is having an incredible year. I would say the comebacks are so much stronger when you've had those setbacks. She's really happy, but she's brought so much joy and positivity to Swifties of every age around the world, and that's just so needed right now. And she's also driven businesses like no one else. So I think it's a great choice. My phone is blowing up. People are thanking us for this moment and for choosing Taylor Swift as our Person of the Year 2023.
Josh King:
Well, I thank you for the moment. I thank you and your whole team for coming down again to share some of that moment with us, to be up there ringing the bell. And I look forward to watching the process unfold with you for 2024. Great to have you at the NYSE today.
Jess Sibley:
Thank you so much for having me.
Josh King:
And that's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Jessica Sibley, CEO of Time. If you like what you heard, please rate us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show or here at guests like Jess, make sure to leave a review, email us at [email protected] and tweet at us @icehousepodcast. Our show is produced by Lance Glynn with production assistance, editing and engineering from Sam Unoti. Pete Ash is the Director of Programming and Production at ICE. And I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the Library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening, we'll talk again next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
