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All Documentary, All the Time? : Discovery Communications Inc. and Trends in Cable Television
Cynthia Chris Television New Media 2002 3: 7 DOI: 10.1177/152747640200300102 The online version of this article can be found at: http://tvn.sagepub.com/content/3/1/7

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Chris / Trends in Cable Television Television & New Media / February 2002

All Documentary, All the Time?

Discovery Communications Inc. and Trends in Cable Television
Cynthia Chris
University of California, San Diego

In 1985, The Discovery Channel first appeared on U.S. cable systems serving a few million homesan undercapitalized, struggling new idea in the competitive cable market, where upstarts rarely make it past the massive barriers to entry. A decade and a half later, The Discovery Channel (TDC) had become the cornerstone of a media conglomerate in control of four basic cable networks reaching viewers in at least 145 countries (Guider 1997, M29); eight digital-tier cable channels; a chain of retail stores; an array of home video, print, and multimedia publishing interests; and other investments. However, the story of the growth of Discovery Communications Inc. (DCI)1 is not simply a tale of the little network that could. Rather, as a media corporation and specifically as a stable of cable networks, Discovery is both typical and exceptional. It has participated in the business-as-usual practices of the cable television industry and in innovations in the industrys structure and programming practices. Thus, an examination of the expansion of Discoverys operations provides an opportunity to survey industry-wide trends of the 1980s and 1990s. In this article, I examine three of the most prominent aspects of Discoverys expansion,2 each of which I introduce below and explore in more depth in subsequent sections. First, Discovery strategically reinvigorated an out-of-vogue TV genre to engineer a niche market. The rapid rise in cable television subscriptions in the 1980sand the proliferation of competing technologies such as VCRs, video games, and personal computersdispersed the television audience that had previously clustered reliably around the three major networks ABC, CBS, and NBC. Advertisers recognized that rather than losing a huge but heterogeneous national audience, they prospectively gained an array of
TELEVISION & NEW MEDIA Vol. 3 No. 1, February 2002 728 2002 Sage Publications

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smaller but more homogeneous audiences to whom they could address carefully targeted advertising (Turow 1997, 33, 39). Discovery entered the cable marketplace defying the prevailing commercial logic of the era, by devoting virtually all of its programming to a genre that had nearly disappeared from for-profit television: the documentary. Indeed, Discoverys own full niche of documentary programmingspanning the content categories science, technology, travel, history, exploration, and nature (OBrien 1989, 56)once seemed to target a dangerously narrow audience. Such parameters now appear so general that Discovery has been able to exploit the categories mentioned above with separate niche networks characterized by increasingly narrowly defined subject matter. Second, Discovery expanded rapidly and widely into global TV markets, often in joint ventures with local media systems. Most pervasively, its alliance with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) facilitated new channel launches both in the United States and abroad. Global distribution by U.S. mass media firms is itself nothing new, dating to the early years of cinema; expanding considerably in film, telecommunications, and news agency services during the years between the world wars; and intensifying further postwar in media, including television under free flow of information policies championed by the United States and adopted by the United Nations (Herman and McChesney 1997, 15-19). In the 1980s, the trend toward U.S. domination of global media markets accelerated, as many nations privatized state-owned media systems and decreased state support for public broadcasting (Herman and McChesney 1997, 26). American firms including Discovery, enjoying vigorous neoliberal protection of freemarket policies (Schiller 1999, 1-2), were quick to take advantage of these changes in the global media economy. The resulting global media system, its new technologies and almost thoroughly commercialized economic formations, have produced, rather than the global village imagined by Marshall McLuhan, something more closely resembling a global marketplace for entertainment and information products (Albarran and ChanOlmsted 1998, xi, emphasis added). Third, the success of TDC and other cable components of DCI afforded the corporation the capital and name recognition necessary to expand into non-TV ventures that leveraged the brand, extending and exploiting its familiarity. These efforts have depended on the development of marketing and branding strategies within the broadcast and cable television industries, borrowed from retail marketing practices. When three major networks reigned, branding strategies were utilized only subtly and inconsistently in television but became commonplace by the early 1990s, as some in the industry recognized that viewers watch programs, not networks, but that the networks and stations carrying the programs can influence their decisions to try new shows (Mandese 1993, 44). One explanation for TVs

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embrace of branding is the growth of channel capacity through digital compression of cable signals, direct-to-home (DTH) satellite services (also known as direct broadcast satellite, or DBS), and deregulation. In the muchheralded (and already upon us) 500-channel universe, consumers may find thumbing through printed or on-screen lists of programs unwieldy. As capacity increases, program selection may take place from menus organized thematically. In 1995, Chris Moseley, then senior vice president for marketing for Discovery, wondered, Where would [Discovery and The Learning Channel] live under this menu? Education? That isnt why people are drawn to our brand. Its incumbent on brands to really get out there and tell their own story (Wilkie 1995, S4). For Discovery, getting out there requires aggressive marketing of brand extensions, despite the serious financial risks associated with such ventures.

Discovery and the Documentary Genre

TDC entered the marketplace during a period of rapid growth and change in the cable industry. The network distinguished itself from the competition even prior to launch, by its devotion to documentary and to natural history, science, exploration, and related topics believed by most of the industry and potential investors to be irreversibly unprofitable. Given the current prevalence of documentary and various nonfiction genres (the news magazine, the talk show, reality-based programming) across the broadcast and cable spectrum, it may be difficult to imagine the rarity of commercial programming in these formats in the years just prior to the launch of TDC. Of course, documentary was not always absent from commercial television. Broadcast networks poured unprecedented resources into documentary production beginning in the late 1950s, anticipating regulatory scrutiny of television content and responding to public criticism of the industry. Much of the criticism contended that television ought to serve the public interest but, so long as it remained free to operate within a freemarket logic, would be more likely to emphasize light or sensationalistic entertainment. Most notoriously, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Newton Minow characterized television as the vast wasteland in 1961, but debates among critics, industry executives, and public interest groups about the direction of television, the vapidness of its content, and its inattentiveness to public affairs began as much as a decade earlier. By 1962, capping a brief period sometimes lauded as the genres golden age, documentary production peaked as ABC, CBS, and NBC produced a combined total of 387 documentary programs in the form of both specials and series (Curtin 1995, 18-19), which were exported to whatever foreign television systems would have them. Explicitly or implicitly, many of these programs focused on the supposed Communist threat to

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the free World, and the cold war superpower standoff (Curtin 1995, 34, 39-41). According to Michael Curtin (1995, 246-48, 252-53), after 1963, the networks pulled sharply away from documentary production for several reasons including unspectacular ratings; disinterest from sponsors and advertisers; the networks turn to less controversial, higher rated, less costly breaking news; changes in the political climate and foreign policy goals; and a friendlier relationship between the Johnson administration and the media industry. A few science and nature documentaries emerged to fill the gap, such as CBSs National Geographic Specials in 1964, and ABCs Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau in 1968; on an ideological level, their exploration, discovery, and adventure themes reiterated, rather than critiqued, American and Western European dominance of global resources. After its founding in 1967, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) became the principal broadcasting outlet for documentaries (Hoynes 1994, 150). The major networks produced only fifty-one documentary hours in 1977, and thirty-one hours in 1987 (Curtin 1995, 246). Discoverys 1985 launch, then, occurred in a commercial climate generally unreceptive to documentary programming. Even among competitors that featured some nonfiction genres, none relied on documentary as much as Discovery. For example, the network most often cited as Discoverys closest competitor, Arts & Entertainment (A&E), which launched in 1984, featured documentaries as only one segment of its varied schedule spanning the arts, comedy, feature film, syndicated dramas, and other genres. None offered much in the way of science and nature, mainstays of Discoverys library: in 1993, these themes constituted only 6.1 percent of all programming hours distributed by PBSs National Programming Service to its affiliates (Bullert 1997, 15). Furthermore, the presence of documentaries (a contested term itself ) on commercial television would be overshadowed by another proliferating nonfiction format: low-budget, so-called realitybased programming ranging from Americas Most Wanted (on Fox since 1988) to Americas Funniest Home Videos (on ABC since 1990). Aspects of this trendespecially its emphasis on crime, scandal, bloopers, and other sensationalistic subjectswould heavily influence the documentary form itself. By the late 1990s, the television industry trade press was touting recent trends as, in the words of University of Georgia telecommunications professor Barry Sherman, indications of the second golden age of the TV documentary (Haley 1997, 47). Arguably, there is more documentary available to viewers than ever before, and virtually all networks dabble in the genre at least occasionally. The broadcast networks, in addition to an increased number of news magazine-type shows, also began around the mid-1990s to reintroduce half-hour and hour-long documentaries, such as CBS Reports.

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But Shermans blanket celebration of the return of documentary to television underestimates the economic motivations for networks to produce and promote nonfiction genres; the usual cost to produce a documentary with Discovery-style production values ranges from $100,000 to $500,000, the latter figure still only about half the average cost of an average hourlong drama (McAvoy 1998, 34).3 Moreover, such unbridled praise overlooks the fact that a great deal of the programming considered indicative of this trend has little in common with its counterparts of the early 1960s, which were characterized by indepth research and attention to social and political issues. While some programs following the investigative journalism model or covering controversial subjects slip through, the current trend called documentary tends to emphasize sensationalism, promote the entertainment industry itself, or offer content of dubious historic or scientific value. For example, during a randomly chosen prime time hour (Monday, November 8, 1999, 9:00-to10:00 p.m.), documentary programming found across the basic cable spectrum took up topics ranging no further than violence, drugs, and rock-nroll. TDCs series Science Mysteries aired a BBC-produced documentary Spontaneous Human Combustion; The Learning Channel offered a reality program called Police Force: Highland Homicide; A&Es Biography profiled the life of actor Sal Mineo and his stabbing death; E!s True Hollywood Story documentary series covered the murder of actress Dominick Dunne by her boyfriend; VH1 replayed an episode of Behind the Music interviewing Madonna and examining her career; and The History Channel aired Getting High: A History of LSD. At the same time, some in the field applaud cable for providing independent filmmakers with new opportunities to produce and televise their work. Independent documentary producers have long benefited from Discoverys penchant for commissioning programming rather than relying on in-house product. Likewise, especially regarding environmental issues, the network has allowed for critical analyses (in, for example, Michael Tobiass Black Tide, 1989, on the Exxon Valdez oil spill) usually evaded in programming dependent on corporate or government sponsorship (Jaffee 1991, 2628).4 Furthermore, filmmaker Barbara Trent (1998) has noted anecdotally that in contrast to what she characterizes as PBSs temerity regarding political critique, Discovery, TLC, A&E, HBO, and other networks deserve credit for embracing cutting edge, risky programming (pp. 243, 245-46).5 For example, Discoverys February 2001 airing of Is It a Boy Or a Girl?, about infants with both male and female characteristics, who are often assigned a sex by means of plastic surgery, tackled a sensitive topic without exploiting it in a documentary endorsed by the Intersex Society of North America and nominated for a media award by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

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Not only independents who have found new outlets for their work in cable television but also some industry analysts credit Discovery founder and chief executive officer (CEO) John Hendricks with single-handedly forging an information and education genre on cable television (Parsons and Frieden 1998, 168). Discovery itself has not always sought to throw in its lot with educational programmers. As DCI executive Chris Moseley has stated, [education] isnt why people are drawn to our brand (Wilkie 1995, S4); instead, Discovery has strategically cultivated the entertainment value of nonfiction. Current offerings across the spectrum raise questions about whether much so-called documentary programming, with its preponderant emphasis on celebrity, accidents, natural disasters, and true crime, qualifies as either information or education. As Geoffrey Darby, then president of the now defunct cable network CBS Eye on People, once remarked, [television] documentaries are no longer a highbrow thing to watch (McAvoy 1998, 34).

Discoverys Origins
Discovery founder and CEO John Hendricks began shopping the idea for an all-documentary cable network to private investors as early as 1982. With $5 million in venture capital and an agreement with Westinghouses Group W Satellite Communications to exchange its services for a 6 percent share of the company, Discovery launched on June 17, 1985, to only 3 million subscribers on about 200 cable systems (Applebaum 1986, 29).6 In 1986, desperate both for an influx of cash and to expand its market share to garner advertising revenue, Discovery forged vertical affiliations with TeleCommunications Inc. (TCI), United Television Cable Corp., Cox Cable Communications, and Newhouse Broadcasting Corp. in which each multisystem operator (MSO) acquired a 10 percent stake in Discovery and agreed to carry the network on its systems.7 The MSOs carriage commitments allowed Discovery to grow faster than any other cable network in 1987 and 1988, reaching 38.7 million homes by early 1989. By 1996, Discovery joined the elite ranks of fully distributed networks reaching virtually all U.S. cable subscribers, which then numbered 67 million; only CNN, ESPN, TBS, and USA Networks met or surpassed Discoverys reach (Parsons and Frieden 1998, 349-51). From its launch in 1985 and until 1989, Discovery depended entirely on the availability of preexisting material; in its first year alone, its library acquired some 1,400 hours of programming. Forty percent came from domestic sources such as the National Geographic Society and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; the rest, from foreign producers such as the BBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Applebaum 1986, 28; Lewyn 1992, 68). Discoverys lack of original programming inspired some

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critics to ridicule the network as a repository for off-PBS reruns, a showcase of stale fare that nevertheless managed to attract an audience (Brgi 1995, 28). To squelch this critique and to replenish an already pickedthrough storehouse of available documentaries, Discovery produced its first original programming in 1989. By 1995, Discovery planned to produce or coproduce 400 hours of original material, amounting to 60 percent of the networks new titles for the season (Greg Moyer 1995, 53), a figure that doubled to 952 hours for the 1996-97 season, spanning the range of its programming subjects, from adventure, nature, criminal justice, human biology and behavior, to interior design and home repair (McConville 1996, 48). However, Discovery did not only endeavor after 1989 to enhance the value of its flagship network, but began to expand and diversify its holdings, initially by acquiring, and later by originating, other cable networks.

The Learning Channel

In 1990, The Lifetime Network offered to purchase The Learning Channel (TLC) for $40 million from the bankrupt Financial News Network (FNN). TLC had originated as a project of the Appalachian Community Service Network in the 1970s, and launched as a cable network in 1980. Lifetime withdrew its offer when TCI chairman John Malone announced his intention to remove TLC from virtually all its cable systems (Waterman and Weiss 1997, 65), which served about one-fifth of all U.S. cable subscribers. Malone later maintained that he was not making a threat to elbow Lifetime out of the bidding but only making a decision based on TLCs poor quality programming and overabundance of infomercials (Auletta 1994, 59). A few months later, with no other offers on the table, FNN accepted $32 million from DCI for TLC. As a result, TCI, with its 49 percent share of equity in DCI, became the new owner of 49 percent of TLC. When Discovery completed the takeover, TLC reached a modest 15 million homes (Goldblatt 1997, 164), targeting both children and adults, with programs ranging from collaborations with the National Educational Association to telecourses for college credit. An attractive offer to cable systemsin which those already carrying Discovery could add on TLC for only five cents per subscriber per month (Eastman 1993, 299)led to an immediate increase in the number of homes TLC reached. Meanwhile, utilizing a campaign of cross-channel promotional spots (Katz 1992, 12), Discovery drew the attention of its own viewers to TLC, now an ally rather than a competitor. Once part of DCI, TLC soon left the task of offering forcredit telecourses to other networks, such as Mind Extension University and Knowledge TV. The revamped network favored programming believed to appeal to broader, possibly more affluent audiences and therefore more attractive to advertisers. Among new genres replacing telecourses

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and how-to on TLC, so-called reality-based programming has won high ratings since The Operation premiered in 1991. By late 1995, with TLCs subscriber base at 43 million, Discovery turned its first profit on this investment; in 1997, the channel reached 60 million homes, four times as many as when it sold to Discovery (Goldblatt 1997, 164).

The Travel Channel

In 1996, DCI sought to purchase the struggling Travel Channel, which then reached 21 million subscribers, from Landmark Communications (Brgi 1997b, 4), but the two companies could not agree on a price (Brgi 1996b, 6). Landmark had itself acquired The Travel Channel from Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1992; TWA had originated the network in the mid1980s as an outlet for travel-themed infomercials. Early in 1997, Lowell Bud Paxsons Paxson Communications purchased the network from Landmark for $75 million, only to turn more than 70 percent of Travel to Discovery for just $20 million in June 1997. Industry observers believed that Paxson, on his own, would have been unable to expand Travels reach, but that the network would benefit from DCIs established leverage with MSOs (Goldblatt 1997, 164). Apparently, Paxson expected that his remaining stake in Travel would increase in value to make up for the $55 million he seemed to have lost on the deal (Brgi 1997b, 4).8 A year and a half later, Travel had lost access to more than a million subscribers, as some cable system operators had not renewed contracts for the network as they expired. To reverse this trend, DCI canceled its six-centsper-subscriber contracts and offered Travel to current and new affiliates at no cost beginning in 1998 and continuing through the end of the year 2000. This move followed similar efforts by MTV Networks, ESPN, and Turner to launch new channels (TV Land, ESPN2, and Turner Classic Movies, respectively) by offering them at little or no cost, although operators sometimes balk at such deals in light of eventualand substantiallong-term fees contracts that follow the free period (Cooper 1998b, 8). For Travel, the strategy seemed to pay off. By the end of the first quarter of 1999, the networks average daily rating had doubled to 0.2 (Cooper 1999, 9) but still ranked thirty-ninth or fortieth out of forty basic cable networks monitored by Nielsen Media Research, and its distribution had increased to 29.3 million subscribers (Hall 1999, 4).

Cable in the Classroom

In 1989, a handful of MSOs and several of the most widely distributed cable networks, including Discovery, began transmitting programming to thousands of public and private schools at no cost. The project, first known

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as Cable Alliance for Education and renamed Cable in the Classroom, involved 19 networks and 33 MSOs in the industrys largest public service initiative since the launch of C-SPAN (Stump 1990, 38). Two years after launch, it reached almost half of all U.S. junior and senior high school students with 500 hours of programming per month (Jessell 1991, 96). In contrast to its predecessor and competitor Channel One, Cable in the Classroom runs its programming without advertisements, but the endeavors sponsorship structure surely reinforces cable-brand identification and loyalty among teachers, students, and parents, who have praised the quality of its educational media, its support for classroom Internet access, and ancillary teaching tools. It also habituates primary and secondary school teachers to educational media through workshops on using media and technology in the classroom (Jessel 1991, 96; Stump 1990, 40). Cable in the Classroom is certainly an important outlet for Discovery content, a brand extension, and a precedent for further activity in the educational sector.

Animal Planet
On June 1, 1996, Discovery Networks launched Animal Planet, a 24-hour channel devoted exclusively to programming about wildlife and companion animals. Securing carriage in the United States through costly one-time launch support payments to cable systems, and within a only few months, a platform for global launch through a joint venture with the BBC, Animal Planet expanded rapidly. Animal Planet was Discoverys fourth cable network, and only the second originated by the corporation. Animal Planet both expands on the success that Discovery has had with wildlife documentaries, and hybridizes the form through generic crossovers with the talk show, the game show, and so-called reality-based concepts offering only minor variations on already familiar nonfiction shows: for example, Emergency Vet, launched in early 1998; Animal Court, which premiered in fall 1998, featuring Judge Joseph Wapner, formerly of the syndicated series Peoples Court (Schlosser 1998, 39); and 1999s The Planets Funniest Animals, based on homemade videotapes. While Animal Planet launched to a modest three to four million homes (Brgi 1996a, 6), its domestic reach expanded rapidly. Within a year, Animal Planet could be seen by 21 million subscribers (Richmond 1997, 27); less than two years after launch, by 37 million subscribers, drawing a respectable 200,000 viewers in prime time and occasionally, at a Nielsen rating of 0.5, surpassing more established channels such as VH1 and MSNBC (Berger 1998, 36). Animal Planet made these strides by offering cable systems $5 to $7 per subscriber to add the channel to its analog tier in 1996 and 1997. Amid an industry-wide dearth of empty channels, adding Animal Planet (or any other network) required most systems to make room by

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dropping another network. The plan depended on DCIs capacity to siphon funds from the profitable TDC and TLC to Animal Planets start-up budget (Higgins 1998d, 53). This cash-draining practice, known as launch support, originated in 1995 when Rupert Murdochs News Corporation offered cable system operators $13.88 per subscriber to add the new Fox News Channel to their lineup. Animal Planet was one of the first subsequent launches to follow suit, at a cost to DCI that could have easily surpassed $200 million, tightening the corporations cash flow but posing no threat to its overall financial health (Higgins 1999b, 106). Now the practice is nearly standard in the industry, skyrocketing the cost to launchand therefore, the barriers to entryfor new networks.

Digital Tier Channels

The expensive practice of launch support provides evidence that securing carriage, especially on the analog tier, remains fiercely competitive despite cable system upgrades pursued by many MSOs in the mid- and late 1990s. These upgrades allowed them to add additional channel capacity to their analog tiers and to forge ahead with plans to accommodate new digital compression strategies that would expand channel capacity (Dempsey 1996, 35, 40). Cable systems were motivated to expand on at least two counts: first, the growth of DTH satellite services with channel capacity in the hundreds can make cables fifty to eighty channel range seem paltry. A raft of compressed digital channels would boost the typical number of channels offered to consumers to around 200. Second, the going forward rules established in 1994 permitted MSOs to add channels (Brown 1994, 20)and to raise rates in proportion to the number of added channels (Simon 1996, 48). TCI seemed the most eager to promote digital cable (Herman and McChesney 1997, 89), because its systems channel capacity already lagged behind that of major competitors Time Warner and MediaOne (Higgins 1998d, 44). Not surprisingly, given both TCI and Coxs equity in Discovery, both MSOs tacked a raft of Discovery spin-offs to all digital subscriptions, commencing in October 1996 with Discovery Science, Discovery Kids, Discovery Home and Leisure, and Discovery Civilization (featuring programming on ancient history) (Churchill 1999, 31). Subsequent additions were Discovery Wings (which focuses on aviation history and technology), and Discovery Health, both in March 1998 (Cooper 1998a, 12), and Discovery en Espaol in August 1998 (Churchill 1999, 31). Hendricks projected that most cable systems would give a portion of their spectrum capable of carrying eight analog channels over to the digital tier. Digitally compressed, that amount of space could carry eighty digital channelsten times as much content possible in analog form. Hendricks announced that Discovery

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would aim for a total of eight digital channels, with the intention of controlling ten percent of the digital spectrum (Cooper 1998a, 12). MSOs hoped that consumers attracted to expanded channel capacity would upgrade to digital cable, rather than jettisoning or downgrading cable subscriptions in favor of DTH satellite services such as DirecTV and Echostar, which in 1999 served about 10 million customers (Higgins 1999b, 21). Fixed costs for introducing digital service, including new set-top boxes that cost twice as much as analog set-top boxes, constitute only a fraction of the cost to rebuild systems to handle additional analog channelsand digital service could turn a profit when it reaches just 20 percent of a systems subscription base (Colman 1998, 46). In 1998, TCI offered a digital tier on its systems reaching 11 million subscribers; 8.6 percent of those homes actually subscribed to the service (Colman 1998, 42), a figure which climbed to 12 percent by mid-1999, indicating steady if not spectacular growth (Higgins 1999a, 22). Optimistic independent analysts predicted that more than half of all TCI (now AT&T) customers would be digital subscribers in the year 2001, and eventually, that digital cable will dominate the market (Colman 1998, 46). The costs of launching digital channels remain proportionately high so long as the service reaches few subscribers because of the difficulty of attracting national advertisers to tiny and unproven audiences. Keeping costs low by foregoing original programming in favor of material from the libraries of TDC and TLC (Higgins 1999b, 106), Discovery aired its digital tier without any advertising revenue at all from its launch in 1996 until 1999, when it began securing ads to support these channels (Cooper 1998a, 12). Discoverys eagerness to establish itself on the digital tier was possible only due to the luxury of multiple incomes streams afforded by its successful vertical and horizontal integration; few if any independent start-ups could gather enough capital to sustain such losses. Not all of DCIs launches have prospered. Your Choice TV, an experimental video on demand or time-shifted service, became available to customers receiving Southwest Missouri Cables digital tier in Springfield in October 1997. The service secured digital bandwidth on Cox, TCI, and 21st Century Systems in a few urban markets but, at its peak, reached only 55,000 subscribers. Co-owners DCI and Liberty Media dissolved the service in 1998 when costs to operate far exceeded income and foreseeable expansion, would not cover losses (McConville 1998b, 2). Also in 1998, a DCI move to acquire Court TV, then controlled by an equal partnership consisting of Liberty Media, NBC, and Time Warner Inc. (Higgins 1998a, 10), fell apart. Industry observers speculated that Discovery was more interested in Court TVs carriage space (possibly as a means of relaunching Discovery Health on the analog tier), than in its programming (Farhi 1998, C10; Higgins 1998a, 10). Reportedly, MSO operators blocked the sale by threatening to void contracts pertaining to Court TVs channel space if its

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programming were substantially altered (Higgins 1998c, 10; Mifflin 1998, D7). Despite these gaffes, DCIs expansion throughout the basic analog and digital tiers has, on the whole, proceeded steadily and at times aggressively.

Discovery in the Global Marketplace

As Discovery settled into its newly comfortable financial situation, following the 1989 consolidation of ownership under the MSOs TCI, Cox, and Newhouse, the company lost little time reorganizing to assure long-term growth. Having finally turned a profit in its domestic market, Discovery set its sights overseas. Discoverys eagerness to become a player in the global media order fulfills the logic of commercial media that, as Nicholas Garnham (1990) argues, seeks to expand not by providing viewers with new choices but by finding new markets to saturate with its product. However, global expansion would not have been possible if nations worldwide were not already engaged in privatizing and deregulating their electronic media systems, a trend set into fast-motion after 1980 by unremitting U.S. pressure, supranational initiatives within the European Union and the World Trade Organization, shifting affinities among national elites after the fall of Soviet socialism, and hardly least, the explosion of Internet systems (Schiller 1999, 203). In the United States, deregulation has allowed greater concentration of ownership and cross-media ownership, and lifted content obligations such as the Fairness Doctrine. In nationalized systems throughout Europe and Asia, for example, deregulation has taken the form of relaxing monopolies and ownership rules . . . increasing the number of television services available . . . [and] the increased funding of television by commercial means in preference to forms of taxation in response to the incorporation of new technologies into the mass media economy, a trend toward allowing the market to determine public interest, and consumer demand (Barker 1997, 29-31). In 1989, Discovery Communications launched the Discovery ChannelEurope. The undertaking lost money for its first six years, but allowed Discovery to test programming and modify marketing strategies for global markets while gaining a toe-hold in territories where cable and DTH satellite services then reached only a small percentage of a potentially huge market (Walley 1995, I-14). In 1992, after a few years of experimentation, DCI organized a new wing known as Discovery/International to launch a fullscale entry into global markets through partnerships with preexisting networks in the targeted countries. This strategy lowered barriers to entry in these markets by facilitating cost-sharing, providing access to personnel already experienced in local culture and business, and opening the door to markets where foreign investment is limited by law (Albarran and ChanOlmsted 1998, 334). Hendricks boast, We hope to blanket the world by

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late 1995 or early 1996, proves to be not much of an exaggeration. Already established in Europe, Discovery set its sights on the Americas and Asia. In 1993, Discovery and Mexicos Grupo Televisa agreed to form a partnership in Discovery Channel-Latin America, with the U.S. firm controlling a 60 percent share of the new service (Brown 1993, 38). In 1994, Discovery partnered with the Labatt brewing company to launch a network in Canada, its equity share restricted by law to 20 percent (Amdur 1994, 28). Also in 1994, Singapore-based Discovery-Asia began multinational DBS service and launched a 24-hour Discovery Japan network in 1997 over both satellite and cable. By 1997, Discovery was available to viewers in 145 countries (Guider 1997, M29). One of Discoverys most extensive joint ventures bridged U.S. and foreign markets. Late in 1996, Discovery and the BBC announced that they were negotiating an extensive joint venture to launch a U.S.-based BBC cable network (McElvogue 1996, D4), and new coproductions (Mifflin 1997b, D7).9 Eventually the complex contract also provided for equal coownership of several new international cable channels (Mifflin 1997a, E1), including Animal Planet Latin America and People and Arts Latin America, both launched in October 1997, and a 20 percent stake for the BBC in DCIs Animal Planet network in the United States (Petrozzello 1998, 18). The alliance also gave Discovery greater access to BBC-produced programming, including first right of refusal on new BBC productions to be distributed in the United States (Mifflin 1997a, E6). These agreements resulted in a vertically integrated joint venture also involving the TCI-controlled U.K. cable system Flextech, and valued at about $1 billion (Herman and McChesney 1997, 46-47). Two concerns about the deal emerged immediately. Stateside, the alliance appeared to allow DCI to usurp the lengthy relationships between the BBC and several of Discoverys cable competitors, as well as between the BBC and PBS (Mifflin 1997b, D7). On its home turf, the BBCs alliance with Discovery stirred criticism about the expansion of the ostensibly publicinterest networks commercial activities (BBC Deal 1997, 4-5). While the domestic BBC continues to rely heavily on television set license fees, and remains obliged to produce programming in the public interest, BBC Worldwidethe division with which Discovery has partneredoperates as a separate for-profit division whose profits are returned to the parent company (Come In 1998, 63). Despite concern that the BBC has been diverted from its mission, its reduced access to public funding and loss of market share to competition, both of which were engineered by the neoconservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Herman and McChesney 1997, 167-68; Alvarado 2000, 309) paved the way for its dependence on BBC Worldwides commercialization (Alvarado 2000, 317).

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Noncable Ventures
While Discovery expanded its cable interests in the United States and abroad, CEO Hendricks also led DCI forays into other media that suggest aspirations toward levels of conglomeratization and vertical integration to rival Disney, a comparison he makes openly (Tedesco 1990, 20). Of course, the analogy between Discovery and Disney only goes so far. While both are deeply involved in media content provision and distribution, Disneys control of delivery conduits extends only as far as its ABC-affiliated television stations. Notably, in a market where a small minority of individual consumers receive television signals by means of antennae, even the large broadcasters now reach most homes by cable or DBS. Discovery, however, is controlled by those who deliver rather than produce content. Furthermore, Disney is beholden to stockholders who expect to be paid dividends; shares of DCI, in contrast, have never been traded publicly. However, Hendricks vision for DCI is not limited to cable television, and has extended into various publishing and retail ventures, websites, radio, feature and IMAX film, and, most unsuccessfully, theme parks. Discoverys publishing efforts would eventually become part of the core inventory at its retail outlets. Its first publishing venture was in home video. Beginning in 1990 with twelve titles, doubling in 1991 to twentyfour, Discoverys first successful home video releases represented a range of its programming interests, from its biographical series Hitler to shark documentaries (Tedesco 1991, 12). Initial sales depended for the most part on direct-response sales generated by advertising on TDC itself, a strategy the network has never abandoned and has transplanted frequently to Animal Planet. Book publishing soon followed, drawing on many of the content categories found on TDC, TLC, and The Travel Channel, ranging from cookbooks and a series of travel guides copublished with Insight Guides to natural history picture books for children. The drive to control the means of distribution for its products intensified as Discovery Multimedia formed to publish CD-ROMS. Its product lines include science, technology, history, and travel, usually linked to a DCI network production; for example, Byzantine: The Betrayal, based on the October 1997 Discovery special Intrigue in Istanbul. The Internet preview of Byzantine utilized a technological innovation by Omniview Inc. that allowed viewers to explore 360 photographs online in real time, which so impressed its client that Discovery purchased an undisclosed share of the company (Tedesco 1997, 48). Eventually, Discoverys web site, which provides television listings and related content, also featured its book, video, and CD-ROM publications as part of an online retail service, as well as gift items, educational toys, and souvenir items emblazoned with the logos of each of DCIs networks.

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Seeking its own outlet for its products, in 1995, DCI purchased eleven stores already known as Discovery Store Inc. for $10 million and renamed the small chain The Discovery Channel Stores. Hendricks linked the purchase to Discoverys self-image as an educational resource:
Viewers turn to us for programming that helps satisfy their natural curiosity about the world. . . . We hope to extend this learning adventure beyond the television screen by offering customers the opportunity to explore first-hand a wide range of Discovery-related products. (Reda 1996, 40)

A year later, Discovery announced plans to build flagship stores under the name Discovery Channel Destination on either coast. The first opened in March 1998 at the MCI Center sports arena in Washington, D.C. (Discovery Comm 1996, 42); the second, in 1999 at the Sony Metreon Center in San Francisco. As DCI undertook the Destination store projects, it also purchased a chain of more than 100 retail stores specializing in nature-related toys and gifts, The Nature Company, for a reported $20 million (Higgins 1999b, 106) from the CML Group, which also owns NordicTrack exercise equipment and Smith & Hawken lawn-and-garden products. DCI remained tightlipped about its losses in the retail sector but industry observers projected profits no sooner than 2001 or 2002. Discovery Enterprises Worldwide president Michela English noted that the stores value would not be measured entirely in sales; they might also have a billboard impact on network viewership that would be impossible to measure (Barron 1999, 53). Susan G. Davis (1999, 449) points out that entertainment-based retail may also provide a place to test new products and gather information about the customerstwo more reasons to sustain a losing or marginal bricks and mortar operation whose retail function could be handed over to online or direct mail marketing and department or discount store chains. Just as important, themed and branded retail entertainment centers develop consumer familiarity and loyalty in part by resituating private media consumption as a public activity that engenders a shared sense of history or social past (Davis 1999, 444, 450). With these factors in mind, it seems unlikely that Discovery will abandon its retail ventures anytime soon, despite their costliness and uncertain future.

Conclusion
If the activities of Discovery Communications Inc. have been many and varied in its brief history, they have also been both typical and exceptional, as I suggested in the introduction. I have considered with particular attention its development of a niche market for specialized subject matter,

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its globalization strategies, and its branding and diversification projects, with the following findings. Discoverys programming strategies appeared to spell trouble even before its launch, but in fact, functioned as just another specialized niche to the rapidly fragmenting TV audience. In 1985, most documentaries in its content categoriesnature, science, history, technology, and exploration resided on PBS, subsidized by government grants, corporate sponsorship, and individual memberships, rather than subject to unrestrained market forces. TDCs commitment to an all-documentary schedule was unprecedented in the commercial sector. Discoverys early success with a documentary framework influenced, if not broadcasters, at least some cable competitors. Eventually, the trajectory of this trend surrounded PBS with an increasingly difficult landscape, marked by intensified competition from cable channels like Discovery, A&E, and the History Channel; PBS president Pat Mitchell reportedly acknowledged that PBSs predominance in certain kinds of programming like science, nature, childrens, cultural and public affairs programs . . . [has] been usurped to some degree by channels that cater to specific audiences (Carter 2000, A16). However, the repopularization of documentary has been orchestrated at least in part by remaking the genre as simply another style in which dramatic story lines can be delivered. Devoted to creating a deep archive of programs that do not show their age, and that can be re-aired not only over time but also in diverse global markets, DCI networks have largely avoided current political matters and historical subjects irreducible to curiosities or long-resolved dramatic conflicts, although noteworthy exceptions are sprinkled throughout its schedule, especially in regard to the environment and some health-related coverage. Instead, these channels have regularly featured natural disasters, unexplained phenomena (which might be spontaneously combusting bodies on TLC or Big Foot on Animal Planet), forensic science, reality-based crime stories, surgical procedures, or human and animal mating practices. This preoccupation with sensationalistic subjects, reality-based formats, and historical reenactments was reproduced industry-wide by the Fox television network and others as means of producing quantities of low-cost television product. Upon attaining profitability in the late 1980s, DCI sought new markets for TDC in the form of joint ventures with already-established local television interests, both to meet constraints on foreign ownership of mass media, and to diffuse risk. Despite some difficulties adapting its programming choices and branding strategies to local cultural values (an area which deserves much further research), Discovery reached 145 countries by 1997. Seeking further leverage and, again, to share risk, DCI globalized Animal

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Planet as a joint venture with the BBC. While DCIs globalization is a case study exemplary of industry trends, it is only part of a wave of global activity by many media corporations, including its direct competitor in science, exploration, and nature content, the National Geographic Channel Worldwide, a joint venture of National Geographic Television, NBC, and in some markets, Fox and other News Corporation components. Globalization, concentration, and vertical integration are trends traceable over a century to the first transnational corporations, which emerged to manage booming Industrial Revolution-era production and distribution, and U.S. TV networks have exported substantial amounts of content and held extensive interests abroad since the 1960s. However, activity such as DCIs in the globalizing media order has accelerated with unprecedented rapidity since about 1980, as established media conglomerated took advantage of deregulation and liberalization in national media markets worldwide. The impact of Discovery and its stable of networks as an economic force, an emulatable style, and a site for potential clashes over local cultural integrity in the global television marketplace are rife areas that deserve further examination. In conclusion, it can be said that Discovery has utilized documentary on an unprecedented scale for commercial television, which has both underscored the uniqueness of its niche in an increasingly competitive and fragmented market, and played a major role in the rejuvenation of both audience interest and programmer confidence in documentary and other nonfiction formats throughout the industry. However, its activities in the global media marketplace, and in various noncable brand extensions, are extensive, even at times, aggressive, but generally follow trends already established by larger, more established corporations. In globalization and branding, Discovery provides only a set of typical examples through which to observe the general trends. In either areas where Discovery has played a role in reshaping the industry, or in areas where it has followed industry paradigms, how significant are the changes of the past two decades? Are they, as Dan Schiller (1999) has asked in regard to broader mass media trends, a qualitatively new development? (p. 205). Historically, none marks an actual sea change. The documentary can be seen as one of many genres whose presence and popularity has enjoyed ups and suffered downs. Furthermore, while mass media organized itself around reaching mass audiences for more than a century with film, then radio, and later television, the proliferation of outlets by means of cable and satellite television played a role in reversing this trend. However, fragmentation of the audience did not change the structure of the industry, which continues to deliver audiences to advertisers, now in endless discrete segments rather than as a national mass. Finally, diversification of corporate scope through cross-media and nonmedia endeavors is hardly new. But as Schiller points out, What is historically new . . . is a change in the

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sweep of corporate rule as media corporations engage in not only predictable entertainment and consumer-oriented product and service lines, but also in key functions of social reproduction (p. 205) such as education, whether in the masked form of value-laden entertainment, or in more direct forms such as the insertion of commercial television programming into the classroom. Discoverys wide-ranging activities indicate that it seeks to position itself as a key player not only in the global media market but also in the thorough commercialization of social functions formerly guarded from profit-driven market logic.

Notes
1. While I use the name Discovery generally, when necessary for clarity, I will distinguish between the corporation as a whole (Discovery Communications Inc., or DCI), its U.S. cable division Discovery Networks, and The Discovery Channel (TDC) itself. 2. Discovery also played an important role in a fourth recent trend in the cable television industry. Its vertical affiliations with multisystem operators (MSOs, principally Advance/Newhouse, Cox, and TCI) did not originate but served as a model for accelerating the trend toward vertical integration. I mention this aspect of the DCI corporate structure only briefly here, but examine it in detail in a separate article. 3. At the high end, costs begin to approach broadcast drama. For example, CNNs thirty-hour 1998-99 series The Cold War cost $20 million (McConville 1998a, 32). 4. Alexander Wilson (1992, 142-43) notes that National Geographics The Grizzlies (1987) commented on the bears shrinking habitat without citing as a cause the encroachments of the oil industry. A logical explanation seems to be fear of offending corporate sponsors. 5. Trent and Dave Kaspers film The Panama Deception won the Academy Award for 1992s Best Feature Documentary but was rejected by PBS as failing to meet their standards for fair journalism, after airing two Frontline hours on the same subject, which were heavily dependent on Pentagon sources. The Panama Deception eventually aired on Cinemax and the Independent Film Channel (Trent 1998, 241-43). 6. At the time, some 6,000 cable systems served 41.5 million homes in the United States (Parsons and Frieden 1998, 112-13). 7. By 1989, MSO investment in DCI reached nearly 100 percent. After United gave up its shares and TCI spun off its programming concerns as Liberty Media, the ownership consortium remained stable for ten years, with TCI/Liberty Media holding 49 percent, Cox Communications and Advance/Newhouse Communications each holding just under 25 percent, and CEO John Hendricks in control of an undisclosed figure reported as 1.4 percent (Cauley 1998, B10) to 3 percent (Parsons and Frieden 1998, 353). The next major shift in Discoverys ownership occurred in March 1999, when AT&T became the second largest U.S. cable provider by

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Chris / Trends in Cable Television acquiring TCI (and Liberty Media, which at this writing, it may have to divest) in a merger valued at between $55 and $59 billion. 8. In February 1999, Paxson sold his remaining 30 percent holding to Discovery for a figure reported at $55 million to stem a potential cash-flow crisis at Pax TV (Stroud 1999, 66). 9. BBC America launched on March 29, 1998, on TCI cable systems digital tier known as HITS. The twenty-four-hour channel features BBC-produced dramas, comedies, nonfiction programming, and daily news (Petrozzello 1998, 18), and migrated to Coxs (and other systems) digital tiers.

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Cynthia Chris is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. Her dissertation, Watching Wilderness, uses textual and political-economic analyses to examine the nature genre.

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