Versant CEO Mark Lazarus is Running a Post-Cable Cable Company

0:00Peter Kafka:Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit dread? It's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place, and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals. Zero chaos. Call it compliance, or call it compliance. Get it? Join the 15 ,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to vanta.com slash com.

0:32Peter Kafka:Support for the show comes from Shopify. Every worthwhile journey starts with a handful of what-ifs. But one day you'll be able to look back and realize that all those what-ifs were small steps towards turning your dream into a thriving business. Shopify can help you get there. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all e-commerce in the U.S. Join them and turn those what-ifs into... With Shopify today. Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash voxbusiness. Go to shopify.com slash voxbusiness. That's shopify.com slash voxbusiness.

1:13Peter Kafka:Support for the show comes from Amazon. There are the things you can plan for. A first birthday party, a movie marathon, a renter-friendly bathroom reno. And then there are the things you can never plan for. A surprise rainstorm, a Blu-ray player calling it quits, stick on tiles that looked way better on the package. For all things planned and unplanned, Amazon has you covered. You'll find low prices on everyday essentials and last-minute lifesavers. Shop Amazon and save on essentials. Save the everyday. day.

1:55Peter Kafka:From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels with Peter Kafka. That is me. I'm also Chief Correspondent at Business Insider. And today we're talking about cable TV and how you run a cable TV business when everyone else has decided they don't want to be in the cable TV business. That's what Versant CEO Mark Lazarus is trying to do. And if you don't know what What Versant is, I don't blame you, since it is a name that didn't exist until recently, when Comcast spun out a bunch of cable networks it didn't want to own, channels like CNBC, MSNBC, USA Network, into a standalone company. That company started off life on its own at the beginning of 2026, and now Lazarus has to convince Wall Street that just because Comcast didn't want to own cable TV networks, that cable TV networks are still a good business to own.

2:44Peter Kafka:Actually, that's not totally fair. What Lazarus is really trying to do is to convince Wall Street that he can transform a bunch of money making but declining cable networks into something else. Just how he's going to do that is the subject of this chat. One little bonus for people who are looking for a bit of background on the future of the Vox Media Podcast Network. That's the network I'm recording this on right now. There's a little bit of that in this conversation, too. So here's me talking to Mark Lazarus. I'm here with Mark Lazarus, CEO of Versant, which I think I have pronounced correctly.

3:18Peter Kafka:Welcome, Mark. Perfectly. Thank you. I got it right? Yes. I was practicing over and over, and I still might screw it up. If I call it Versant, don't hold it against me. Versant is our name. It does take a little practice, but you think about conversant. I am recording this the day you have announced your Q1 earnings. It is your second earnings call? Second earnings call, first truly as a standalone company. The first one was really a recap of 25, where we had broken out financials, but we were still part of NBCU. So we have savvy listeners, so most of them know your backstory, but we'll spell it out.

3:53Peter Kafka:You guys were spun out of Comcast at the beginning of the year. They are one of several companies that have either tried to or have ditched a lot of their cable assets. So there's a lot of question marks about, well, what is this company that you have left? And your stock got hammered for much of the year, but today it has come back. You've regained a lot of that. And the earnings look like it's a glass half full, half empty situation. If you want to be negative, you could say, hey, you're a big cable company. You're a bunch of cable networks, and those are in decline. And that's why Comcast spun you off, and that's why Wall Street has question marks about you.

4:32Peter Kafka:And then the positive version is, hey, we're throwing off cash. We have these other businesses that aren't directly tied to cable networks. Those are growing. Wall Street likes that, which you're a CEO. You have to be the optimist. Of course. What do you think they responded to today? Let's start with your first premise, that they ditched us. We spun. We didn't get ditched. But let's be clear. If they got rid of you, I'll say, you won't say it, because they thought it would help their stock and their story. We believed that we could mine more value for the Comcast shareholders by splitting the company into two and having two businesses that could have more focus than one company where the assets that are now part of Versant were really being harvested and the money was being used for other corporate priorities.

5:23We could now reinvest into our own businesses. So that was the thesis and the premise. The stock going down at the beginning was totally predictable and expected, in that, as part of Comcast, these assets were part of a company that many people of the investor base were there not for media. They were there for the cable side, for the broadband side, for that business. So, they were natural people to turn that.

5:51Peter Kafka:So, once they were handed stock in a cable network company, they said, no, thank you. That's not for us. That's not what we planned on or why we bought Comcast. And even more importantly, we were no longer in the index funds. If you have an index fund that focuses on the Fortune 500, we weren't in that. They had to sell. They couldn't, by their charter, maintain their equity in us. So we knew there would be a large turnover of the investor base. Yes, it went down a bunch, but it's now moving its way back to around where we started. And it's arguable what you could say where we started, right? The day we spun is a number, but really we look at what it looked like over the first week as things started to churn.

6:36Peter Kafka:We'll probably hit this a couple different times, and we've already done it once, I guess. Whether Comcast did this because it was best for Comcast or Comcast did it was best for you, and the Comcast folks were saying, this is really good for Versant. It wasn't called Versant at the time, right? Spinco. Spinco. So, but most people look at it and say, hey, if they thought it was good, they would keep it. And we saw this play out a bunch of times, right? Prior to being acquired by the Ellisons, Warner Brothers Discovery was going to split itself up and put most of its cable networks off to one side.

7:11Peter Kafka:A &E is selling off its cable. People who own cable networks are trying to get rid of them. And the story for all of them is these things make money. They throw off cash still, but they are in secular decline. Who wants to own that? So make the case that you should still be in Comcast or that everyone's wrong and that these are actually great businesses. Well, I'm going to make the case as to why we're going to evolve our company and be a company that investors are one only part of, employees are going to be proud to be part of, and that consumers are going to utilize our assets. So we have a series of assets of which, as you know, spin out a lot of cash.

7:51Seven linear networks, four digital networks. We bucket them into four verticals. We look at the strength of our iconic brands and how we can utilize those to build businesses and transform ourselves from, at the beginning, a year ago, we were 83 % pay television dependent. and 17 % not. We're now over 20 % not pay television dependent and just under 80 % pay television. So we are spinning out a lot of cash. What are we going to use that cash for? Right? That cash is the one, first, we want to have a strong balance sheet, which we do. We have a low debt load. We're able to service that debt. Still have a lot of cash.

8:38Invest in the company, invest in the company in a variety of ways, invest through organic investment in our brands, both in content or in adjacent business. CNBC, what used to be called MSNBC, and is now MSNOW. And so we can invest into those brands, and I'll call those, you know, it's sort of EBITDA accretive investments that help build a broader audience around not just pay television. And that's, we've done three small acquisitions to date. We bought Stock Story, which is an AI recommendation engine and toolkit to help power CNBC's evolving D2C project that we're going to launch in the not-too-distant future.

9:23We bought Free TV Networks, which is free over-the-air television, which is an advertising-based service, you know, not tied to pay television. and we bought Indy Cinema, a software business that will underpin and work with Fandango and service and provide differentiated and more services to cinema operators.

9:44Peter Kafka:When you go to the movies and you buy a ticket from Fandango, that's going to your company. That's going to our company. Yeah. But not just the ticket exchange, but now we have a software business that's unrelated, that can be worked, whether you buy a ticket from Fandango or not, if we work with those cinema operators. We're expanding that rapidly. You guys said you want to get to 50 % of the business will be non-cable TV. That's an aspiration, and that's a years-long project, but that is our goal. And we've done that in the golf business. Our golf business, about 13, 14 years ago, was 100 % golf channel.

10:19We now have Golf Channel, Golf Now, which is a tee time business where we book 40 million tee times, Golf Pass, which is a direct-to-consumer business, and an underlying software business. And that golf bucket of assets is 50 % pay television and 50 % non-pay television.

10:40Peter Kafka:Does it matter to you whether these new non-cable businesses have some connection to the existing cable businesses that still power the company? Or you find some asset that's got no connection to anything, but it's just a nice media business or whatever business you'd like to have it? We're open to the best ideas. Podcast network I could sell you. I've read about that. The basis of it, and I think audio is a very good business, and we have a large audio business. I mean, between our networks streaming on SiriusXM as one and the myriad of podcasts we have across mostly our news networks, but some in the golf space and some in the entertainment space.

11:21Peter Kafka:So there's no illusion about, no, no, cable networks are going to come back. It's we know this is a declining asset. The trick is to leverage what we can out of that and sort of outrun the decline with new business. The trick is to arrest the decline as best we can by raising ratings. I mean, this quarter we raised ratings across many of our networks. That doesn't arrest the subscriber decay, but it arrests the audience decline. So to do the best we can to mitigate that decline and build assets around those and use those assets like we did with golf. I mean, Golf Now was local tea time businesses.

11:58We used the Golf Channel to power that business and make it a very successful business.

12:03Peter Kafka:I remember talking to some of the folks you used to work with at Comcast at NBCU. They had put a bunch of money into digital businesses, including Vox Media, where we're sitting right now, BuzzFeed. And I think they bought a bunch of Snapchat shares at one point. Those three, that's that. And that was a press release. We've spent more than I can remember what the number was. But it was a big number. This is how much we spend in digital. And within a few years, I was told, you know what? These digital advertising-based businesses, we're not so interested in those, but we love the golf tee time business.

12:33Peter Kafka:Things like that where there's an actual transaction. We like that. And you were around for that investment. I was around for that. That was done. The thesis then was let's invest in these businesses, learn from them, and see if we can create some, because we were minority investors, create some strong commercial relationships between our company and theirs and see if we can work it into growth. That's not a strategy that I think is right for today. You don't want to buy money losing web publishing businesses? Likely not. And I don't think for us minority investments or passive investments are not the way we're going to grow or change our company.

13:15We need to buy companies that we believe in, that we either are profitable or we see the short path to profitability, and that we're going to operate and consolidate results.

13:23Peter Kafka:As you're speaking now, I'm remembering just, you know, I wrote a story last week when BuzzFeed more or less sort of quit. Yeah. And thinking about when they were doing those deals with you, how confident the BuzzFeed people were that they were going to teach Comcast slash Universal how to make television shows and movies for millennials. Well, I've been around long enough to remember when AOL said the same thing about Time Warner. We're very old, is what we're saying. Exactly. You spun out of Comcast, but you're still connected to the mothership. They are selling your ads. Correct. They just did their upfronts.

13:57Peter Kafka:You guys are a big part of that. They're telling advertisers you can buy NBC and all the Versant stuff as well. That goes on for another year. You're getting more comfortable with that. Yeah, it's practice. That's another year of that, right? Yep. And then what happens at that? Do you keep going with them? Do you say we're going to stand on our own? I think they and we will evaluate how it's going in the back half of this year. I mean, they're in the middle of the market right now. I believe that it's been good for both sides. I have a long history in ad sales personally. Before taking this role, one of the responsibilities I had at NBCU is running the media group, and ad sales was part of that.

14:39And Mark Marshall and his team are, I think, the best in the business. So it's working right now. I think it's mutually beneficial. Right.

14:51Peter Kafka:The pros are you're part of an existing ad sales operation. Everyone knows how to do it. Also, you've got a lot of stuff on your plate. It's helpful for you to have someone. It's helpful for us. We provide a lot of reach. They have a lot of, we'll call them shiny objects, very high-demand products. So there's a good reason that it works well. Now, that being said, it has to work well for them, has to work well for us. We both have optionality, and we'll get together probably in the fall and decide if it's working and under what terms. Yeah, and how do you weigh sort of just the dependency, right, that if this is going well now, but if in a year and a half it's not going to work, we'd rather sort of get out ahead of it and start building up our own sales?

15:33So there are certain guardrails in the deal that will protect it. I mean, this was meant to be good for both sides. We'll make a decision. There's a variety of options, right? We stay with them. They want to stay with us and we want to stay with them. Then that might be the best option. There's other third parties that have approached us and asked us if they would represent us. That's another option. And then there's an option of us doing it on our own. Or maybe there's hybrid versions. We'll be right back with Mark Lazarus.

16:04Peter Kafka:but first a word from a sponsor. I keep seeing celebrities' posts, me in the 90s versus now. While the person staring at me in the mirror is definitely not the same person that could pull off bootcut jeans, time creeps up on us so slowly. You don't see it until suddenly you do. Same thing goes for your bills. A dollar here, an uptick there. It's a slow burn until one day you realize the price you're paying now is way higher than when you signed up. But at T-Mobile, customers had the lowest wireless bills versus Verizon and AT &T over the past five years. And with T-Mobile on their experience plans, you get a five-year price guarantee, so you know exactly what your plan price will be for the next five years.

16:47Peter Kafka:So at least that's one thing that won't change over time. I can't guarantee you'll still look good with frosted tips, but T-Mobile can give you a clear guarantee on your wireless plan. Lower bills based on Harris X billing snapshots from Q321 to Q425 compared to average AT &T and Verizon bills. comparison excludes discounts credits and optional charges price guarantee and talk text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply ctmobile.com support for the show comes from amazon there are the things you can plan for a first birthday party a movie marathon a renter-friendly bathroom and then there are the things you can never plan for a surprise rainstorm a blu-ray player calling it quits.

17:27Peter Kafka:Stick on tiles that looked way better on the package. For all things planned and unplanned, Amazon has you covered. You'll find low prices on everyday essentials and last-minute lifesavers. Shop Amazon and save on essentials. Save the everyday. What if you could have the most reliable Wi-Fi at the same price for five years? That's the Xfinity five-year price guarantee. No annual contracts, no hidden fees, and our best equipment included. Plus, get online in minutes with same-day Wi-Fi. Just five years of fiber-powered Wi-Fi that boosts speeds to the devices that need them most. Lock in your price and unlock the possibilities.

18:09Peter Kafka:Xfinity. Imagine that. Select plans only. Restrictions apply. Powered by fiber. Connected to the premises by coaxial cable. Actual speeds vary.

18:21Peter Kafka:And we're back. You mentioned a DTC, direct-to-consumer product. You have a couple of them already, right? There's a CNBC Plus. There's CNBC Plus, CNBC Pro. But that's going to be reimagined in a whole new set of product line. And there's more coming, right? MS Now. MS Now, which, you know, MS Now, and part of this goes to the whole theory of the spin, is MS Now, then MSNBC was part of the news group. The news group had certain resources to spend against digital products. They chose to work on other things rather than have MS Now have its own digital footprint. Really, up until really even as today, it's essentially a text-based website with some show clips.

19:10That's not a modern media company. We're investing in creating a D2C product for a very large, very engaged, very passionate MS Now audience. that we believe we can create a nice subscriber base for.

19:25Peter Kafka:And so for all, maybe each one of these has a different arc, but I'm assuming that the idea is not to say, hey, instead of watching us on your linear cable distributor, you can watch it on the Internet because that kind of already exists. It does exist, right? Is the idea that we can generate more revenue by giving you extras and it's basically a sort of a fan club for people? It's going to be more of a sense of community. It's going to be having... Is that across all of the DTC stuff? They will all have a different – you will be able to have the stream, the linear stream in there, but there will be many other aspects.

20:01That's not the selling point. The selling point is the community, and they're different for each one. Selling point for MSNOW, it's about community. It's about being around, getting more voices in the tone that you're interested in. It's about different kinds of mindfulness, wellness. It's about direct access to talent, live shows with talent, interactive stuff with talent. I mean, a lot of the luxury we have is these talent, these personalities have real connection with their audiences.

20:30Peter Kafka:And so that's a direct example of even though linear TV is dying, we can make more money from this product. We think we can create a product with the same tone and voice that people will want to pay for that is additive to what they're watching on our linear. Have you seen examples like that in other places that work? I mean, Fox Nation is the obvious one. I think Fox Nation is a very good one. I mean, they, over time, have created a similar tone and voice as they have with Fox News. You are a Fox News super fan. You want more. We're going to give you more stuff. We'll give you more in a different way.

21:03And I think that that's a perfectly good strategy. I think it's worked for them, and I think it's something that we can do. I think the New York Times did it, right? We're going to give you the newspaper, but we're also going to give you games and food and other things. that align with your lifestyle. So I think there's a myriad of examples out there.

21:21Peter Kafka:And with the Times case, right, they're saying you could buy games or cooking on your own, but really it's all part of the bundle. It makes the thing more worthwhile to you. But that's not what you're doing here. You're saying this is a separate add-on for people who are already watching. It's a different business. It's a different business. And we think it'll be different enough that we can promote it some on air and get our viewers to want to buy it. And, you know, I got asked today on the earnings call by one of the investors that I see you've been promoting Fandango and Golf Now. I don't know if you heard that on air.

22:02I said, well, yes. Thank you. We've got a lot of time. We've got inventory, but it also proves the value and power and the reach we have with our linear services to drive transactions.