![]() If you visit TLC.com,, , you'll see a wealth of content in addition to long form, that's available on the channel. We are also developed pretty aggressively our own online services around each of our channels. Our response is to look at winning content services that have been developed on the Internet. Hendricks: Well, that's a key question because they, you know, largely, while television usage has increased among the total population, the traditional television-watching, has had a decrease as Millennials are going to other platforms. Schawbel: How do you think you'll be able to compete for the attention of Millennials? That's our plan in dealing with the fragmentation and to get bigger and develop multiple networks that we can sell advertising around using the scale of their reach. In looking globally, we're continuing to make acquisitions where our plan is to have scale and have multiple networks globally, including broadcasting, for example, with our recent acquisition of the Scandinavian Broadcasting System, we've acquired a number of broadcasting stations, in addition to new cable outlets. That's another way we deal with the fragmentation, is to look for success stories around the world, and make acquisitions where we can. There was a company called Revision 3, that was founded and based in San Francisco, that started to accumulate some of the best talent, for example, on YouTube, and so we studied them intently and made an acquisition. We've watched for the success stories of user-generated content. Secondly, as the Internet began to explode, that was another platform, which really has almost endless options of content. That was our first step in dealing with fragmentation, was to be a multi-network player. We quickly set out to create additional channels for distribution, first in the United States, and then around the world. In the beginning, cable systems were limited to about 54 channels until the era of digital compression, which took place in the mid-1990's and so that was just the explosion of channel choices and our response to that fragmentation was to think harder and not be one channel within a universe of two-, three-, four hundred channels. We've gone from a time when we had three commercial-broadcasting networks and PBS back in the 1960's and early 1970's and with cable, we started to add additional channels. How have you evolved your own network to be relevant with the times? Schawbel: The media world is much more fractured today than it was back in 1985. ![]() I didn't know all the reasons why it wouldn't work and I think it was an advantage in a lot of ways. I came into it from outside the business, which had some advantages. In 1982, nobody was creating that kind of channel, so I had the idea to start the Discovery Channel. I was waiting for someone to create my favorite kind of channel. I was intrigued by that because I was a fan of documentary entertainment and when I was in college I was aware that there were so many documentaries because my job as a work-study student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I had catalogues of documentaries that I would help the professors get in for their classes. Then there was a Supreme Court decision that was prompted by a lawsuit brought by HBO against the FCC. There had been a significant Supreme Court case in 1975 that basically allowed the existence of satellite-delivered cable networks. This goes back to 1982 and I was just observing what was happening in the cable television industry. John Hendricks: I came into the media business from outside the media business. Dan Schawbel: How did you originally get into the media business and what obstacles did you see from the beginning?
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