Next Issue Media Names CEO

Morgan Guenther, formerly of AirPlay and TiVo, will replace John Squires as head of the digital publishing joint venture.

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Next Issue Media, the joint e-reading venture between Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp. and Time Inc., announced today that it has named Morgan Guenther [pictured right] as its new CEO effective immediately. Guenther replaces John Squires, who has been serving as acting managing director for the last six months and will be leaving the venture.

Most recently, Guenther served as chairman and CEO of AirPlay, a wireless entertainment services company. Prior to this position, he served as president TiVo Inc., from 2001 through 2003 and before that as SVP of business development and revenue operations. Guenther sits on various technology company boards and is also a former partner at Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP. He will lead Next Issue Media from its new San Francisco office.

"Next Issue Media is well positioned to create and deliver incremental business opportunities to the magazine and newspaper publishing world," Guenther said in a statement. "The potential for value creation across the entire industry ecosystem— including consumers, advertisers, publishers and distributors— is massive. Our task now is to execute on that potential, and I'm excited to be leading the charge here."

Next Issue Media was established six months ago to create a common digital content format and storefront to distribute it. According to Squires, the storefront will not only offer magazine and newspaper content, but also content from books, comic books and blogs. Up until now, there have been very few details released regarding the launch date for the platform and storefront.

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