Magic school buzz - Scholastic Inc.'s chairman, president and CEO Richard Robinson

Chief Executive, The, March, 1997 by Leah Rosch

He also moved the company into the educational technology market in the '80s, and today Scholastic supplies schools and homes with instructional software programs. "We knew we had to use the media kids are using. And so we're now into CD-ROM publishing, and we have our own teacher-based online service that reaches kids indirectly, through the teacher."

Yet, one of the most important Robinson-engineered moves has been translating the company's ink-and-paper products into other media. Under the Scholastic Productions unit, a division Robinson launched in the late '70s, children's television programming has evolved into a textbook example of synergy at work. The company's popular Magic School Bus series of science books for grade schoolers has been reincarnated in two forms: as an Emmy Award-winning animated series on PBS and in three CD-ROM games, produced in partnership with Microsoft. And then there's "Goosebumps," the live-action TV show (based on the Scholastic-published R.L. Stine horror stories), which has been the most-watched children's show since its fall 1995 debut on Fox.

Financially, Scholastic Productions is a small piece of the nearly $1 billion company, having provided a bit more than 4 percent of its 1996 fiscal year revenues. But the unit is also Scholastic's fastest growing segment, more than doubling the last fiscal year's numbers to $39.8 million. And even if some of its projects fail to meet expectations - such as two feature films (and boxoffice disappointments), "The Indian in the Cupboard" and "The Baby-Sitters Club" - they have "an echo effect on the rest of the company," says Robinson, by helping to sell more books and spin-off merchandise.

Still, not every path Scholastic has taken has been gilded. Example: the company's unsuccessful foray into the textbook market in the late '70s. "Education went through tough times in those years," says Robinson. "School budgets were slashed, and the perception was that public schools were horrible places. It became clear that our timing was off. We pulled back from elementary textbooks in the early '80s." In addition, Scholastic's customer base was shrinking; births in this country dipped under 3 million for the first time since the Depression. And finally, competition among book-clubs shook Scholastic's footing in that market.

As a result, revenues languished. And in 1986, Robinson made the decision to take the company, which had been publicly traded since 1969, private. "We needed to pay attention to our business without having to issue reports or worry about what people were thinking of us," he says. It proved a smart move, and when the company went public again in February 1992, the stock opened at $26 - 15 percent above what underwriters were expecting. "After five years of being private, we were much bigger, more profitable. We were able to reintroduce the company as something else."

Robinson has recently made another tough, even controversial decision in revisiting the instructional curriculum market. For starters, this puts Scholastic head-to-head with such market behemoths as Houghton Mifflin and McGraw-Hill. And according to Rudolf Hokanson, a printing and publishing analyst for Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, "The company and its prospects would be much more attractive if they hadn't gotten into [the curriculum area]."