Hubbard Broadcasting’s Stanley S. Hubbard
Interview by R. Randall Padfield - June 1, 2008
Some people have aviation in their DNA. Stanley Stub Hubbard got it from his father, Stanley Eugene Hubbard, who took up flying in 1916, started a few marginally successful airlines, opened an airport in Louisville, Ky., and helped organize the Metropolitan Airport Commission in 1943. By then he had already established himself in radio–and had passed on the flying bug to his son.
“My dad was an aviation pioneer and a radio pioneer,” Stanley S. said proudly, as we chatted in his KSTP-TV office in St. Paul, Minn. “He bought a radio station in 1923. We were the first regularly scheduled news program in the U.S. In 1948 he put TV on the air.”
The elder Hubbard stopped flying after he got into radio. Said his son, born in 1933, “We had an old Stearman in the backyard of our lake house. I used to sit in it and pretend to be flying.”
But in the early fifties, Stanley E. bought a Cessna 180 and started flying again. His son started flying, too. As the family-owned Hubbard Broadcasting grew, a succession of airplanes followed, including a Gulfstream V. Stanley S. took the reins of Hubbard Broadcasting in 1981 and that year established U.S. Satellite Broadcasting as a subsidiary. USSB went public in 1996 and Hubbard sold it to Hughes/DirecTV for $1.3 billion in 1998. Hubbard Broadcasting today has some 1,100 employees and owns a dozen television/radio stations and two cable channels.
The March issue of Forbes listed Stanley S. Hubbard as the 743rd richest person in the U.S. (down from 297th in 2007), with an estimated net worth of more than $1.6 billion both years.
I understand you began working for your father in 1951. What was your first job?
I started working here at KSTP-TV as a file clerk and later became a news photographer. I’d listen to the police radios and go out to chase accidents, fires, holdups, murders–everything. We’d come back to the studio, process our own film, make eight-by-ten prints, dry them, mount them on cardboard and give them to news writers, who would write stories around what we’d tell them. Then we’d get into the studio, where we had two cameras and two easels. When the announcer went from one story to the next, the photographers would pull the pictures, faster than the eye could see. At home, all you would see was the picture change. It’s a little different now.
You became president of Hubbard Broadcasting in 1967, took over the business in 1981 and became chairman and CEO in 1983.
My dad had a stroke and withdrew from the business in 1981. He was still chairman in title but was never here. He died in 1992.
I’ve heard you say that as chairman and CEO your job now is “chief cheerleader.”
That’s right. All of our companies are run by very good people. Our kids grew up in the business and are good executives. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be here. I chair the board meetings and get into things about policy and large investments. I talk to people and once in a while they’ll listen to my ideas–sometimes they even take my ideas. But they run the business on a daily basis. Some of our grandchildren are also working for the company.
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