The third edition of Who Owns the Media (LEA Publishers) describes Scott DeGarmo as “an entrepreneur in a magazine editor’s body.” Indeed, DeGarmo has launched new publications and conferences and injected life into dying ones throughout his entrepreneurial career in the publishing industry. In 2004, DeGarmo acquired a controlling interest in Broadband Properties Magazine and took over as Chief Executive Officer and Editorial Director, re-launching a publication that had served the shrinking world of private cable operators and transforming it into the leading magazine for the emerging Fiber-to-the-Home market. With an emphasis on editorial excellence and integrity, Broadband Properties quickly became known nationally and internationally as a publication with a wealth of financial and technical information about infrastructure for the wholesale and large-scale buyers and users of broadband technologies. Its success gave birth to Killer App Magazine and KillerApp.Com. “Once you think about putting in the high-speed pipes, you want to know how you will use all that bandwidth,” DeGarmo notes. Killer App took as its focus “Emerging Applications for a Connected World.” The timing was highly auspicious, and awareness of Killer App spread rapidly from a small base. DeGarmo had previously co-founded Broadband House Magazine, the first and only consumer publication dedicated to living and working in the high-bandwidth era. He described the magazine as one where architecture, design, construction, business, technology, and lifestyle all come together. DeGarmo launched the magazine in 1999, when broadband service was mainly reaching early adopters. As President and Editor-in-Chief, he seized the broadband trend and quickly built the magazine to a circulation of 200,000, with a newsstand sale of more than 50,000. Upon learning about the incipient Fiber-to-the-Home market in 2003, DeGarmo sold his interest in Broadband House, which had a readership base among users of cable, DSL, and other legacy technologies, and set out to pursue an opportunity in a venture dedicated to Building the Fiber-Connected Community, as the tagline of Broadband Properties came to be. Previously, for 13 years, DeGarmo was Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Success Magazine. When he took over Success, the magazine had a small circulation and did not carry a single page of national advertising. DeGarmo focused the magazine on the entrepreneurial boom and turned it into a hot property. When he and his partners sold their interest in 1997, the magazine had a circulation of 500,000, had higher per issue sales on the newsstand than all other business magazines (according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation), and had an impressive roster of blue-chip advertisers. (The sale also included other properties DeGarmo had created, such as conferences and the magazine Working at Home.) DeGarmo used an arsenal of tactics to raise the visibility and reach of Success. A frequent and dynamic public speaker, DeGarmo keynoted major business and technology events in the U.S. and abroad and made multiple appearances on national television programs ranging from The Today Show and the Oprah Winfrey Show to CNN and CNNfn. He also staged successful conferences packed with nationally known entrepreneurs, public speakers, and best-selling authors.

Prior to running Success, DeGarmo was editor of Science Digest. When he took over, the magazine was a small pulp publication with no national advertising and on the verge of being shut down by its owners, the Hearst Corporation. DeGarmo identified a new base of readers and advertisers and addressed the boom in the popularization of science. He revamped the magazine and grew it from a circulation of 50,000 to 450,000, with editions in Italy, France, Australia, Scandinavia, and throughout Latin America. Under DeGarmo’s leadership the U.S. magazine soared to a newsstand sale approaching 100,000, unusual for a niche publication. Soon its pages were packed with computer, technology, and consumer electronics advertising. DeGarmo previously was editor of Family Weekly, which had been an undistinguished national Sunday supplement for medium- size newspapers. DeGarmo recruited top contributors and turned the publication into a window on Hollywood and Washington, growing the circulation from 10 million to 12.8 million. Within several years it was sold to CBS. DeGarmo has also been a newsman for United Press International, and an editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the St. Petersburg Times.