Discovery Channel Finds Its Niche

It isn’t sex, violence or car chases that make cable TV’s all-documentary Discovery Channel this year’s fastest growing cable company.

It’s large, predatory animals.

“The most popular thing on the Discovery Channel is our nature programs--and generally the bigger the beast, the better the ratings,” said John Hendricks, president and chief executive officer of the Cable Educational Network, which owns and operates Discovery. “Sharks, leopards, big predators. . . . If it can eat you, the ratings go through the roof.”

Although Discovery’s average rating of 1 poses no threat to network television (where this season’s lowest rated prime-time series averaged a 3.4), it’s better than MTV’s .8 rating and has attracted enough advertisers to push the company into the black since November.

Edward Hatch, a vice president and media analyst for Merrill Lynch capital markets, said Discovery has made all the right moves in creating a successful company.

“I think its form of programming is very stimulating in its nature--between science, nature, world events and offering an international point of view,” he said. “Their audience is composed of people of above-average income and education, and that’s what’s attractive to advertisers.”

Cable industry executives are sure to be talking about Discovery when they gather in Los Angeles this weekend for Cable ‘88, the annual convention of the National Cable Television Assn. Topics of discussion during the three-day event, which begins Sunday at the Los Angeles Convention Center, will include the deregulation of cable, high-definition television and its place in cable networks, colorization and the future of the industry.

When he launched Discovery in June, 1985, Hendricks was banking on the belief that some people would rather watch documentary fare than network entertainment programs. The channel features 18 hours of programming daily in six categories: science and technology, nature, history, travel, countries and people, and human adventure.

“Now it seems like a logical idea to have an all-documentary channel, but back then, it seemed like a radical idea,” Hendricks said in a telephone interview from Discovery’s headquarters in Landover, Md. “What we saw was an opportunity in the dissatisfaction which a lot of people have had about television. Consumer dissatisfaction in any area means an opportunity for growth.”

According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., Discovery is the fastest growing cable television network in cable history.

“People call in and say: ‘Now I can watch TV all evening long and not feel guilty for it,’ ” Hendricks said with a laugh.

The statistics: Discovery, which began with a potential audience of 156,000 households, passed the 30-million household mark last month. Nielsen deemed Discovery the fastest growing basic channel because it achieved 34% of U.S. household penetration in 34 months, less time than it took any of the others among cable’s 17 basic channels.

The only exception is Nickelodeon’s nighttime service, Nick at Nite, which took 22 months, but that was with the advantage of starting with a 25.5-million-viewer base from Nickelodeon in April, 1987. Nickelodeon took 92 months to achieve 34% penetration.

Hendricks attributes the network’s success to narrow-casting--but not too narrow.

“When we were putting together Discovery, we heard there were some plans for a science channel,” Hendricks said. “But that’s like having a tennis channel (instead of an all-sports channel). We couldn’t support ourselves on just science, or just travel. But an all-documentary channel is still unique to the viewer.

“(Ted) Turner did that with all news on Cable News Network, and ESPN has all sports,” Hendricks said. “They’re broad enough, but still narrow enough to be dependable to the viewer.”

Hendricks added that in the past, quality documentary series on network TV have been cancelled because they interfered with audience flow.

“When audiences got through watching, they (the networks) would experience immediate audience abandonment,” Hendricks said. “They would switch to PBS or go back to reading the Wall Street Journal.”

Many of those viewers, in other words, don’t usually watch commercial television, and that, Hendricks noted, has been a boon in attracting advertisers.

“On Madison Avenue, it means being able to reach a reading audience that before could only be reached through the print medium,” he said. “We delivered an audience that just doesn’t watch network sitcoms.”

The company gets most of its programming from documentary producers in North America, but Hendricks said they also acquire material from the United Kingdom and Australia.

Documentary producers are pleased to have an additional outlet for their work besides the networks and PBS.

Bill Burrud, whose Los Angeles company produces the syndicated “New Animal World,” has a deal with Discovery for a series of documentaries called “The Battle Of . . .,” exploring notable military conflicts, primarily in the Pacific region.

“We would have a tough time finding an outlet for these things if it weren’t for Discovery,” he said.