REMEMBER DISCOVERY?: Do you remember the discovery channel? For
many of us, the discovery channel was a classic portion of our childhood. Basically, if you had
grown out of the Nickelodeon and Disney phase, you were probably watching the Discovery Channel. They
had everything from How It’s Made, Gold Rush, Cash Cab, and Deadliest Catch to Mythbusters, Dirty
Jobs, Planet Earth, and Naked and Afraid. They also had random one off specials like Nik Wallenda
crossing the Grand Canyon. Also, who could forget shark week. Every year, shark week almost felt
like a worldwide event like the World Cup or the Olympics. Whether you went to get a hair
cut or went to Home Depot, you’d probably overhear people talking about shark week. But, since then,
much has changed for the Discovery Channel. For one, many people don’t even have regular
cable TV or satellite TV. Instead, they simply have a hand full of subscriptions like Netflix
and Disney+ along with maybe YouTube Premium. The Discovery Channel did try to ride this new trend
by launching their own streaming service called Discovery+ in late 2020. But, this hasn’t worked
out all that well. Sure, they were able to get to about 22 million subscribers, but this is nothing
in comparison to their status a decade ago. In 2010, for example, MythBusters alone pulled in
85.8 million views within just the first 9 months of the year. The Discovery Channel was actually
so big that they were their own public company worth as much as $20 billion. But, more recently,
the Discovery Channel agreed to complete a merger with WarnerMedia, and this is how their new stock
has performed. Their popularity graph isn’t much better either, in fact, it’s actually worse.
Since the 2000s, search volume for the Discovery Channel has literally dropped by 90 to 95%. So,
here’s the rise and fall of one of the most classic media businesses of our entier generation.
DISCOVERING THE ORIGIN:
Taking a look back, the story of the discovery channel dates all the way back to 1982 to a man
named John Hendricks. John had a pretty average background. His father owned a local contractor
business while his mother worked as a clerk at the city government. So, like most people, John’s
obvious career choice was to go to college and get a job. John ended up attending the University of
Alabama where he studied history. This was also when John started experimenting with his creative
side. You see, while John attended college, he had a part time job working in the audio visual
department, and this is where he really fell in love with producing documentaries. John felt
that quality documentaries were something that the American public severely lacked,
but he also wasn’t crazy enough to dive straight into the media business. Instead, he got a
traditional job at his university after graduation where he led community and government relations.
He would eventually transition to the University of Maryland where he did the same job, but this
time, he would also work on an entrepreneurial project. He cofounded a fundraising consulting
company that focused on publishing academic newsletters. The company never rose to insane
heights, but it looks like it gave John enough confidence to take a gamble with media. So,
in 1982, John would found Cable Educational Network, and as you would guess, the company
focused on providing documentary programming to cable broadcasters. The big jump forward didn’t
come till 1985 though when bigger players also become interested in the space. The
BBC was likely the most well known of these, but they were by no means the only one. These
players became investors in a new project led by John called the Discovery Channel. Initially,
this was just supposed to be a subsidiary of Cable Educational Network, but as funding grew larger
and larger, John would shift his entire focus to the Discovery Channel. Soon enough, he would
actually change the name of the parent company to Discovery Communications Inc, and that marked
the beginning of network that we’re all familiar with today. At first, the company only broadcast
12 hours a day between 3 pm and 3 am to a modest 156,000 households. But, everything they aired as
a banger. 75% of their content had never been seen by an American audience and much of it covered
fascinating educational content. This included cultural documentaries, wildlife documentaries and
science and history specials as well. They even had some Soviet programming. Very early on, they
also experimented with Shark Week which quickly turned into an annual event. Given that Americans
couldn’t get this content anywhere else, the Discovery channel exploded in popularity. In fact,
within 5 years of launch, their reach would grow from 156,000 households to 50 million households.
John had clearly hit a goldmine and all that was left was to double down and build on this success.
THE DISCOVERY EMPIRE: At
first, the next steps were obvious and clear. Just keep doing exactly what you were doing
but at a larger scale. This meant expanding to an international audience and launching and acquiring
new networks, and this is exactly what Discovery did. They expanded to the UK in 1989 and they
followed this up with an expansion to Asia and Latin America. Something you may not know about
Discovery is that they actually owned a bunch of our other favorite channels as well. This started
off with an acquisition of TLC in 1991 and quickly grew to encompass Animal Planet, Planet Green,
the Military Chanel, and FitTV. Discovery also ran a number of popular websites as well including
Howstuffworks.com and treehugger.com. While they had their hands in so many different genres and
mediums, the core mission of the company always rang true which was to be “The number-one non
fiction media company.” All of this climaxed in 2001 when the Discovery Channel became the world’s
most widely distributed television brand. They were even bigger than Netflix is today reaching
300 million households in over 180 countries. At one point, it was estimated that their cumulative
viewers had even crossed 1 billion people per year. They had made it to the absolute top,
but this made the following question very difficult to answer: where do they go from
here? Well, the correct answer would have been to just keep doing what they were doing and be happy
being a mature media network. But, investors nor executives were exactly pleased with just
that. They wanted more growth, more viewers, and of course more money. And given that Discovery
had peaked out in the non fiction market, there was only one way to continue growing:
aim for a broader audience. This meant adding in more elements of reality TV and focusing more on
the storyline than the facts. In the beginning, this actually worked out great, in fact,
you could even argue that this is exactly what Discovery was previously missing. While purely
nonfictional content was great, this extra element made the content phenomenal,
ad this gave rise to the golden age of Discovery. Show like Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs,
and Deadliest Catch had this perfect mix of nonfiction and fiction. Mythbusters, for example,
centered on the scientific process, physics, and engineering, but it wasn’t limited to just that.
It also had personalities, drama, emotions, and most importantly, people that you could relate
with. Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs was likely one of the most down to earth people to have ever been
on TV, though he has started to take some heat for his anti union stances more recently. This
golden period didn’t last forever though. In late 2007, Discovery announced that they were
gonna go public in 2008. This was terrible timing given that it was during the heart of the great
recession, and it wasn’t that surprising that the IPO didn’t go all that well. But,
this lackluster IPO was just the beginning of Discovery’s long and painful descent.
DISCOVERING NEW LOWS:
Now that Discovery was public, pressure from investors was larger than ever, and they were
legally obligated to act in the best interest of investors. Discovery was already headed in
the direction of adding in too much reality and not enough science, but the IPO simply
solidified this trend. The show that most people point to as the epitome of Discovery's decline
is American Chopper. The show focused on a group of people who set out to create the world’s most
unique motorcycles. While this was indeed an interesting premise, it had virtually nothing
to do with science, education, or learning. It was a reality show, a successful one, yes,
but was it something that aligned with Discovery’s mission? Not at all. While the show garnered a
bunch of viewers, it was completely different demographic. Fortunately, classic Discovery
viewers had classic shows to turn back to right? Well, yes and no. The classic shows were indeed
still being produced and aired, but these too were missing something. Shark Week, for example,
starting receiving a bunch of criticism that it was filled with a bunch of misinformation and
blatantly false science. Similarly, Mythbusters was drifting away from science and experiments to
action and explosions. We saw fewer clips of Jamie or Grant explaining Newton’s laws and more clips
of the crew blowing up random crap just for fun. Now, don’t get me wrong here, watching them blow
up random crap was quite entertaining in itself, but you still couldn’t deny that the show had
somehow lost what made it so great. Soon enough, these shows were not only losing their souls,
but they were getting cancelled. This didn’t necessarily mean that the shows were doing bad
per se, but they had simply reached their natural ends. Dirty Jobs, for example,
wrapped up in 2012 while Mythbusters wrapped up in 2016. Usually, there would’ve been plenty of shows
that these viewers could have switched too, but this time, all that was left was the reality crap.
And overtime, the core discovery viewer simply tuned out. This downtrend was simply accelerated
by macro conditions within the media industry. The trend wasn’t to get cable or satellite TV.
The trend was to ditch cable and satellite TV. In 2015, 76% of Americans had traditional TV,
but by 2021, only 56% of Americans had traditional TV. Meanwhile, platforms like Netflix and Hulu
were skyrocketing in popularity. Netflix, for example, has grown from 50 million subscribers
to over 200 million subscribers in the last 7 to 8 years. And the worst part about all of this was
that the majority of the people leaving cable for Netflix was the more generic audience who
was interested in the reality shows. Meanwhile, the people that were left behind were the classic
Discovery viewers. Yet, Discovery was spending all their efforts chasing after the rapidly shrinking
reality audience. And at this point, there was only one way that this story could end.
DISCOVERING THE FUTURE:
Looking forward, while Discovery is by no means as large as they once used to be, they’re still
a sizeable media organization. I mean 22 million subscribers is nothing to scoff at. Also,
the merger with Warner Media has boosted their total subscribers all the way to over 90 million.
With this new catalyst, it seems like it’s just a matter of time until the new Discovery is able to
rival Netflix and Disney with their 200 million plus subscriber counts. But, while Discovery has
a solid chance to become a media giant once again, the Discovery that we all knew and loved is still
very much dead. This second wave of growth will almost completely be fueled by reality shows
like Trixie Motel, 90 day fiance, Alone, and Ghost Adventrues. And given the merger with WarnerMedia,
it’s unlikely that Discovery will ever return to what we remember it as. They’ve simply shifted to
serving the broader entertainment market, and that’s what happened to Discovery. Do you guys
prefer the old Discovery or the new Discovery? Comment that down below. Also, drop a like if you
miss the old Discovery. And of course, consider checking out our discord community to suggest
future video ideas and consider subscribing to see more questions logically answered.