Exhibit 99.4

                  4Q 2003 EARNINGS CONFERENCE CALL
     Remarks of Eric W. Schrier, SVP and Global Editor-in-Chief,
                    and President, North America

                            July 30, 2003

Thanks Mike and good morning.

I am going to eliminate the pretense of suspense this morning by
starting at the end: in Fiscal 2004, we expect the four North
American divisions that I am now responsible for--U.S. Magazines, US
Books & Home Entertainment, Canada, and Reiman--to collectively grow
earnings in the mid-teens, and at something north of that in Fiscal
2005.

Now while each of these divisions faces its own challenges, they
all share a simple set of strategies on the road to success: first,
they will focus on those parts of the existing businesses that have
the most leverage; second, they will invest in new initiatives that
either reverse significant negative trends or offer opportunities
to attract new customers and create new lines of business; third,
they will align costs with realistic revenue targets so that
stronger profit margins can be sustained; and fourth, they will
realize significant financial benefits by simply working more
effectively with each of the other divisions.

As I discuss the individual businesses in more detail, you will see
examples of each of these strategies embedded in their plans.  But
ultimately, we are only going to be as good and go as far as the
people who are designing and executing these plans take us.  And on
that score, you should be extremely confident.  During the past 18
months, this company has hired some of the best people in the
publishing industry: Russell Denson, the former CEO of Weider
Publishing, as the new CEO at Reiman; Jackie Leo from Meredith and
The New York Times to be the editor-in-chief of Reader's Digest
magazine; Laura McEwen, fresh from engineering a dramatic
turnaround at YM magazine, to be the new Publishing Director of
Reader's Digest magazines; Frank Lalli from George & Time Inc. to
head up our magazine development efforts; and Neil Wertheimer from
Rodale as editor-in-chief of our Health & Home book programs.

These newcomers are teamed with some tremendous talent who were
already doing great stuff here, such as Pierre Dion, the Managing
Director in Canada; Dawn Zier, our circulation director, Keira
Krausz, who heads up the Health & Home Entertainment business; and
Bonnie Bachar, the North American General Manager.  These leaders,
and the newly energized staffers working for them, are the reason I
am so bullish about our prospects, and the reason you will see such
significant growth during the next few years.

So let me take you on a quick tour of the challenges and
opportunities that lie in front of us, beginning with the Reader's
Digest family of magazines, which include the flagship, Reader's
Digest Large Print, U.S. Selecciones, The Family Handyman, and
American Woodworker.

This is a group that in Fiscal 2003 delivered a profit margin of
about 6 percent, up from earlier projections but clearly not where
we want to be. Several key factors have depressed operating
profits. Principal among these is that contributing profit in
circulation for Reader's Digest magazine has dropped every year
since 1994 as a direct result of reduced investment in subscription
acquisition efforts during the early and mid 1990s and from
declining sweepstakes response rates. Advertising performance has
been lackluster as well and our costs remained too high for too
long given the declining revenues.

We have set the stage for stabilizing circulation profitability and
growing our market share in advertising by renovating and
rejuvenating the content of Reader's Digest magazine during the
past 27 months. Take a look--it is timelier, livelier, and more
relevant with a bolder, more contemporary design.  But we have
executed these changes without forsaking the drama, humor,
optimism, and everyday humanity that built Reader's Digest into the
largest circulation magazine on earth.  And it's working--we are
bringing in more new subscribers and holding on to them at higher
rates without losing a single point off longer-term renewal rates
that are among the highest in the industry.

So why then, you might ask, are we choosing to lower the rate base
to 10 million? Because that is the level at which we can guarantee
a sustainable stream of new customers--good quality
direct-to-publisher customers and high-paying renewers. The result:
a more attractive audience to advertisers, and a more profitable
circulation to us. In fact, for the first time in 10 years, in
Fiscal 2004, circulation profit will not decline.

This is good news, but you will still read in the trade and
consumer press, just about every time Reader's Digest magazine is
covered, how the magazine's rate base has declined from 13.3
million 5 years ago down to 10 million.  But what you will rarely
see in those stories is one important, transformational fact:
during the past 5 years, the flagship magazine strategically
reduced its dependence on the once-spectacular draw of sweepstakes
promotion from 100% down to 0%.  Think about it.  The magazine has
gone from pulling in all of its new subscribers and renewals using
this technique, to none of them coming in that way. And the number
of new subscribers that we bring in each and every year is greater
than the full circulations of more than 99% of the magazines being
published in this country.  More recently, the circulation
department has found creative ways to lower the costs of non-sweeps
customer acquisition and renewals, which is a good part of the
reason that circulation profitability is now stable.

There is also tremendous leverage for Reader's Digest on the
advertising side of the business, and that is why we are investing
in new leadership, advertising sales support, and promotion on
Madison Avenue.  We can and will make more sales calls, in more
categories, to more of the right people, and we will arm our sales
force with stronger marketing and promotion materials.

We are also investing in franchise extensions that will either
drive revenue and profits or materially improve the perception of
the Reader's Digest brand. I'll give you five examples:

  -     With the RD Specials newsstand program, we are delivering half
        a million copies each of 17 different magazines to 100,000
        supermarket checkout pockets every year. We are using
        existing content from either Taste of Home, The Family
        Handyman, or Reader's Digest magazine and books. From a
        standing start last November, this program is already ranked
        22nd in magazine retail dollars at Walmart (out of 700
        magazines).

  -     The ChangeOne diet is Reader's Digest's first and only
        authorized weight loss program. We will be marketing
        ChangeOne in the magazine, in trade and direct mail books,
        as a paid service online, and to corporations for many years
        to come;

  -     The Reader's Digest National Word Power Challenge is a
        vocabulary contest that attracted more than 800,000 4th to
        8th graders in its first year.  The competition culminated
        in a national championship event in Williamsburg, Virginia,
        and a highly-rated television show on NBC affiliates across
        the country--both hosted by Al Roker.  We expect this
        national event to introduce millions of kids and their young
        parents to the Reader's Digest franchise for a long, long
        time.

  -     The fourth example revolves around the testing of two new
        print products for sale to the magazine's most loyal
        customers--RD Extra, which is a quarterly magazine on
        personal finance, and RD Classic, which is an annual book
        that will feature the best dramas and humor from Reader's
        Digest's storied past.

  -     And last, likely television partnerships with cable channels
        to produce programming and incremental ad revenue under the
        Reader's Digest brand are just around the corner.

All the efforts described above for Reader's Digest magazine, along
with similarly aggressive efforts at the Special Interest
Publications, lead us to two significant conclusions for this part
of the North American business: within two to three years, we
expect to deliver double-digit profit margins and a return to
sustainable top-line growth.

Meanwhile at U.S. Books and Home Entertainment--which includes
Reading Series, Health & Home Books, and Music--we are looking hard
at the longer-term prospects for each part of this portfolio.
Collectively, the three businesses lost money in Fiscal 2003,
although their performance was much better than it was in Fiscal
2002.  And they will continue to improve.  But the more critical
question is, how high is up?  This year, if we cannot identify a
clear path to reaching and sustaining a high single-digit profit
margin in Fiscal 2006, we will either sell or shut down the weaker
pieces of this business. The good news is that the team has already
identified the most significant impediments to growth and are
testing an impressive array of potential solutions.

For Reading Series, the most important results from the tests
revolve around two initiatives:  to convert the non-sweeps flow of
new magazine subscribers to Select Editions, our condensed book
series, and to improve the response rates to Weekend Reader, a
fresh formulation of the traditional series that gives the customer
more choice so that ultimately it can replace the one-size-fits-all
Select Editions format.

At our Health Publishing division, we have had some success with a
series of books that focus on specific diseases or health
concerns.  These books are marketed to people who have notified us
that they are receptive to information on a particular topic. And
they are sold entirely without the use of sweepstakes promotions.
Currently, we are conducting tests to determine the scale of this
opportunity: how big, for instance, can we make the mailable
universe of people with diabetes for our new book, Stopping
Diabetes in Its Tracks?

The general books business in the U.S. hinges its growth on non
sweepstakes promotions to a broader customer base, while music is
developing lower-priced, varied packaging options for retail and
direct mail.   Last month we signed a deal with Navarre, an
industry leader in retail distribution of independent music labels
and artists, to market 40 compilations per year from the Reader's
Digest music vault.

Rest assured that for all of our BHE businesses, we will continue
to lower costs in line with revenue projections.  And we will
continue to work closely with Tom Gardner and his international
team to ensure that our respective businesses that depend upon one
another remain aligned.

In Canada, our business is solid, with profit margins in the 15%
range, and it has the potential to grow with further investment. In
Fiscal 2004, for example, we are investing in the launch of a new
product--Our Canada, a bimonthly, Reiman-style magazine that plays
to the pride Canadians feel about the beauty and character of their
country.  We are also looking to our Canadian colleagues to use
their in-country marketing expertise to help Reiman find ways to
more than double the circulation levels of Taste of Home and
Country Woman in Canada, now both at approximately 100,000
subscribers.

At Reiman, we are intent on tapping the enormous potential that we
see there. Our efforts are centered on initiatives that will return
the company to double-digit bottom line growth. We are focused on
four objectives:

First, grow the magazine portfolio. In Fiscal 2004, we are
investing $3 million to drive 400,000 more new subscribers to the
Reiman magazines. We are intensifying our efforts to sell Reiman
subscriptions to Reader's Digest customers and Reader's Digest
subscriptions to Reiman customers. And, most importantly, we are
launching a new bimonthly magazine, Backyard Living, to complement
the Birds & Blooms franchise, which already has more than 2 million
subscribers. This new magazine, which will launch in January, is
designed to help people make the most of their front and backyards
and the time they spend there--from gardening tips to easy
do-it-yourself projects, to cooking and entertaining. By the way,
The Family Handyman editors will be supplying about 30% of Backyard
Living's content.

Backyard Living is just one of four Reiman-inspired magazines that
we are planning to test across the company in the coming fiscal
year, including Our Canada and two others in Brazil and the U.K.
Clearly Reiman is inspiring a different kind of creativity
throughout the company.  Now, we don't realistically expect that
every new magazine we launch will make it, but we have designed
these tests and launches so that even if only one of them is
successful, it will more than pay for the development costs of the
ones that do not move ahead.

The second objective at Reiman is to find book products that are
not so closely tied to the existing Reiman magazines. Reiman has
created a very profitable line of business with book annuals that
use the content of each magazine title and are sold primarily to
the subscribers of that title.  But there is a sizable opportunity
to create books that can be successfully marketed across all Reiman
titles, as well as to the Reader's Digest data base. A Contest
Winner Recipe Collection and a Diabetic Cookbook are two such
examples.

Number three on the list at Reiman is to drive pricing.  We can and
will find ways to increase the revenue we get per copy through
increases in introductory and renewal pricing for the magazines.
With 15 million subscriptions, even a modest increase to most of
the file could add up to significant bottom-line growth.

And finally, we need to create new products and services that take
advantage of the many strengths at Reiman and its new association
with the other Reader's Digest divisions. For example, we have
opportunities to get more out of our sold-out Cooking Schools, to
expand our Cooking Expos, to expand Taste of Home's newsstand
presence, and to drive advertising dollars to Reader's Digest
magazine in the food category by leveraging the high demand and
limited access to Reiman customers.

So, for Reiman, Fiscal 2004 is a year of investing in future
growth.  That will mean roughly flat to slightly up year-over-year
operating profit with mid-single-digit top line growth.  But the
impact of the Reiman acquisition is already producing many other
benefits across the corporation that don't show up on Reiman's
P&L.  I mentioned the Reiman-style magazine launches around the
world, the RD Specials newsstand business that would not have been
possible without Taste of Home, the combination subscription offers
driving circulation to Reader's Digest, and a new-found focus on
creating and marketing book annuals at Reader's Digest. In
addition, Reiman is testing products for sale through Books Are
Fun; helping to drive broader savings in printing, paper,
fulfillment, and customer service; and accelerating our migration
to products sold without sweepstakes. And it's doing this all the
while infusing the company with new talent and new content
strengths--in food and outdoors--to augment our existing ones--in
health, home, finance, and family.

So that's a current snapshot of the four North American divisions.
In short, it's a promising portfolio of complementary businesses
that will not only grow the bottom line significantly in the
foreseeable future, but has the potential to return top line growth
to this part of the company again as well.

I look forward to sharing the results of these efforts with you in
the coming year.

Now we would be happy to take your questions.