Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith sent out the following note to the staff on Thursday:
Dear Colleagues,
Despite logistical challenges as we undergo construction on our main set in New York, the global Bloomberg TV team rose to the occasion and delivered insightful reporting on the market meltdown over the past few weeks. We harnessed the power of our international TV operation, producing live coverage from our hubs in Hong Kong, London and New York throughout the week and even across the weekend and evenings. Our viewers and customers were certainly tuned in. Bloomberg had its biggest day last week in both live streams and live video viewers since the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013. We had the highest number of live stream viewers since we launched our new site in late January. The team landed some stellar bookings. Rounding out an impressive month for Bloomberg TV were key moments including: Manus Cranny’s interview with Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund CEO Yngve Slyngstad; Caroline Connan’s interview with French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron; Olam CEO Sunny Verghese with Angie Lau live from Singapore, choosing Bloomberg to speak exclusively on the sale of a 20%, $1.09 billion stake to Mitsubishi; Indonesia’s new Trade Minister Tom Lembong with Haslinda Amin in Jakarta just 48 hours after his appointment; Tom Keene‘s interview with Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer; Michael McKee and Brendan Greeley‘s reporting from the annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium; and Emily Chang‘s conversations with US Defense Secretary Ash Carter and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. Mark Halperin and John Heilemann‘s full-episode sit down with Donald Trump on “With All Due Respect” is the most-covered interview since the launch of the show, and one of the most talked about interviews Trump has given to any media outlet this cycle. We are expecting even more high-profile interviews this fall. David Westin helped kick off September yesterday with a newsmaking interview with Warren Buffett. As you know, Mike announced last week that Al Mayers is now leading Bloomberg TV globally in addition to Bloomberg Radio. Given his remarkable success building Bloomberg Radio, we are excited to have Al leading the charge on global TV. You can expect to hear more from him and his team about the development of our new US-based morning show as we lead up to its launch in October.
We are also thrilled to welcome Linda Douglass who joined yesterday as Bloomberg Media’s Head of Global Communications. Linda comes to Bloomberg from an impressive career in communications, journalism, and government. She brings great judgment and experience to this critical role and will be a tremendous asset as we continue to share the Bloomberg Media story.Other important updates from August:
- We’ll never tire of sharing that Bloomberg Media posted another record video traffic month, maintaining the #1 position in comScore’s Business and Finance category for the third month in a row. In July we reached 16.5 million unique video viewers worldwide, with unique viewer growth up 103 percent year-over-year. Our video audience remains larger than Yahoo! Finance, International Business Times, CNBC, CNNMoney, Fox Business, and more. Traffic to Bloomberg Business continues to grow. We posted 24.5 million unique visitors in July, remaining ahead of WSJ.com, CNNMoney, and others.
- Anjali Kapoor joined us as the head of our digital editorial team in APAC. Based in Hong Kong, Anjali will oversee Bloomberg Media’s digital editorial across Asia, working closely with our teams in London and New York to create and publish tailored APAC regional content across all platforms. She will lead the upcoming launch of the Asia edition of Bloomberg Business, our new digital home for business news across the region. We’ll have more to share on that soon.
- Bloomberg Politics had a milestone month of digital traffic in August, reaching its highest audience levels yet and its best month of video performance. This followed stellar performance in July, with 3.6 million unique visitors and a record 1.4 million video unique viewers in the U.S. “With All Due Respect” has also blanketed TV & digital coverage of the 2016 election, landing interviews with six presidential candidates in August (including the aforementioned tour of his campaign headquarters at Trump Towers in Manhattan), two special hour-long GOP debate preview shows in Cleveland, and three shows out of the Iowa State Fair. Last week’s Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll garnered more coverage than any poll conducted by other media outlets this cycle.
- Bloomberg Businessweek ranked in the top 10 magazines by audience (including video, web, mobile and overall brand audience) and growth according to the MPA’s Magazine Media 360° Brand Audience Report for the U.S. in July. The MPA noted that Businessweek has the largest video audience out of all the brands reported.
- Following an interview with Bloomberg Markets Executive Editor Ron Henkoff in Tokyo, the magazine of the American Chamber of Commerce ran a cover story on Bloomberg Markets and its editorial evolution. The article quotes Ron saying, “As we’ve evolved, we’ve also recognized that, as the printed word moves forward, the way you display it also moves forward.”
- More exciting news for Bloomberg Pursuits. The Wall Street Journal’s James Gaddy has joined us as deputy editor. He will be Emma Rosenblum‘s number two as the magazine continues to grow and evolve under her leadership.
- We introduced a number of new ad products, including Trendr and B:INTENT, which were highlighted in a Digiday story this month. The development of these products was a true team effort across business units. Special thanks to Andy Ely, Jason Eng, Dhaval Shah, Parth Shah, Norman Dalager, Sharon Chen, Kyle Holzinger, Peter Kong, Bradley Retterer in R&D; Dan Hallac in operations; and Megan Latham, Kristin Pederson, Jen Robinson and Keith Grossman in sales, ad ops and marketing.
- Bloomberg Content Service signed 23 deals, with new business in Japan, China, Germany, Spain, UK and the U.S. Clara Yim sold a new terminal and license deal to Beijing Caijing, an independent, bi-weekly magazine focused on finance and economics in China. Dan Treinish and Christine Morgan signed a video distribution deal with AOL, where our short form business and politics clips are among top performers on AOL’s Finance page. The BCS team also launched a splashy new website in collaboration with Central and Consumer Marketing to serve as key entry and reference point for customers and prospects.
Thanks for all of your hard work this month. Let’s all get ready for a busy fall.
