It has been exactly a year since David Saabye was named CEO of Golden Peak Media, succeeding Jeffrey Litvack, who transitioned to chairman. Prior to that, Saabye served as SVP of product development at BridgeTower Media, where he led product strategy for its portfolio of more than 40 business intelligence and marketing brands.
Saabye will be a featured speaker at SIIA Media’s Content & Revenue Day, May 16 at the Yale Club in New York, appearing on the Opening Keynote Panel titled The Journalism Advantage: How Content Experience Enhances CEO Performance. The morning event—preceding the Neal Awards Luncheon—is geared to helping marketing, sales, product and C-suite executives find the best path to revenue growth through collaboration with content leaders.
SIIA Media Alert recently conducted a Q&A with Saabye to coincide with his year as CEO. The variety of Golden Peak Media’s products stands out in an age where media companies strive for revenue diversification.
“There are so many opportunities with this business,” he told us. “We serve communities of artists and craftspeople who are incredibly enthusiastic about their creative activities. We do so across print, websites, newsletters, TV shows, books, live events, contests, and many other formats.”
Here is more from that Q&A:
SIIA Media Alert: What has been the biggest challenge in your year as CEO so far?
David Saabye: It’s been an amazing year. Being new to Golden Peak and being a first-time CEO, the last 12 months have been an educational and rewarding experience. The biggest challenges have included learning to prioritize my time effectively and striking a balance between maintaining a high-level overview of the business (more time than I expected) and delving into specific details when necessary. And I need to remember to focus less on the areas of the business where I am most comfortable and dedicate more time to the aspects with which I am less familiar.
What is an area or two that you’ve been able to make a significant difference?
To make a difference, I’ve focused on prioritizing our activities. As an organization, slowing down and doing fewer things simultaneously have been necessary to ensure they are done well. Specifically, significant efforts around audience acquisition and retention have accelerated. This is the heart of the business. Financial necessities such as transitioning HR, benefits, and payroll to a PEO and relocating the headquarters to a more appropriately sized office space took precedence over many other initiatives that were less immediately impactful.
You still have many print magazines. Do you see that ever changing or do your audiences still covet them?
Print remains very important to our community. We publish nine print magazines and four annual print SIPs (special interest publications). The fine arts segments we focus on include watercolor, pastel, oil painting, and drawing—which by their very nature are highly visual and express well in printed form.
Our quilting magazines are also highly visual. They combine beautiful photography with detailed patterns and corresponding instructions to help readers create the featured quilts and other projects. These detailed patterns are very easy to follow in printed form. Our magazines are published either bi-monthly or quarterly. Each issue prioritizes timeless content and high production quality (design, paper, and printing). This strategy is driving our newsstand sales success.
How are events doing? It looks like you’re keeping virtual events in the mix.
Events are doing well. To be honest, running enthusiast events is more challenging than B2B events—a key learning for me. We are relying on individual entry fees for marketplace expo revenue vs. corporate sponsorships for tradeshows. Therefore, keeping virtual events in the mix ensures we have opportunities which are as accessible as possible to as broad of an audience as possible, while operating at a sustainable margin.
Where does the majority of your time get spent now and has anything surprised you in the past year?
We have so many ways which we engage deeply with artists and craftspeople. I anticipated spending most of my time refining and evolving our products—it’s the fun part of what we do and a lot of my time does go there. It’s what brings joy and happiness to our audiences, readers, subscribers, and participants.
Magazine subscriber management requires constant attention, more than I expected. M&A has become an important part of our growth strategy in 2025, which is exciting. And I’m looking forward to spending more time with our TV shows (Love of Quilting TV and Quilting Arts TV) that are broadcast on PBS stations nationwide.
Thank you very much, David. See you at Content & Revenue Day, May 16 in New York.
