Hooked by curiosity

More people today watch Discovery than any other English channel. What makes it tick?

Sitting in his plush office in New Delhi’s Qutub Institutional Area, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific Senior Vice-president and General Manager (India) Rahul Johri can’t stop smiling. He runs three channels: Discovery, Animal Planet and Discovery Travel & Living. The flagship, of course, is Discovery. And its viewership has marched ahead of English movie channels, the half-a-dozen or so sports channels, English news, music, English entertainment and even some Hindi news channels.

Man Vs Wild , Discovery’s number one reality series, recorded a 1.14 per cent Television Viewer Rating (TVR) in January 2009 and was watched by 1.7 million viewers across India. To put it simply, running successfully through the year, Man Vs Wild scored ahead of all movies released by English movie channels including HBO and Star Movies and helped the channel to record a 32 per cent relative market share on Tuesdays at 9 pm. In the same period, the channel widened the gap with all English news channels: Its viewership was 538 per cent higher than NDTV 24X7 and 823 per cent higher than CNBC. (Source: TAM).

And it’s not just English-speaking old men from socio-economic categories A and B in large cities who watch the channel. “Discovery’s more than just a metro phenomenon,” says Johri. “In Varanasi, for example, I’ve got into taxis and found that drivers were familiar with host Bear Grylls and how the host survives rattlesnakes, alligator attacks, hurricanes and searing deserts. We are penetrating into the length and breadth of the country.” So, what makes Discovery tick?

Break the clutter
Discovery started out in India way back in 1995 with a heavy dose of programmes on animals. But viewer fatigue set in within no time. Mating tigers and slithering snakes could be seen on all channels. It was time to break the clutter. So, around five years ago, Discovery did its first course-correction in India — it introduced historical and forensic investigation programmes. The insight here was that Indians find mysteries fascinating.

But the animal kingdom experience was always there on the back of its mind — the look and feel of programmes needs to be refreshed before viewers get bored of the channel. No genre can survive more than three years. Around this time, Discovery got a fix over its core audience. These were men and women (60 per cent men and 40 per cent women) above 15 from varied socio-economic categories. What also played on its mind was that half of India’s population was below 30.

This sort of defined the kind of programmes Discovery would show: Technology, adventure, engineering, science and wildlife. These are all subjects that appeal to young people. And this now defines Discovery’s position very clearly of a reality entertainment channel. From a channel that showed boring documentaries, its attempt is to morph into an entertainment channel that is factual and credible. Since the programmes are shot live, the feel of reality television, which has taken audience by storm the world over, is unmistakable.

For the programmes, Johri and his team dip into Discovery’s worldwide resources without any reservation. Its global library has “thousands and thousands of titles,” says Johri. Every quarter, the channel, for the Indian region, gets 10 new series — the highest number, according to Johri, as compared to any other channel. Discovery is shown in 179 countries. In addition, Discovery buys programmes from independent producers in India and also commissions a programme or so every year. Programmes from the global pool of course work out the cheapest.

“Our programming budgets are huge and vary according to content,” says Johri. He adds that each hour of global programming that audiences see on Discovery can cost up to Rs 1.2 crore easily. In fact, one of the hosts of an Indian-based programme on Discovery told Johri that the cost of producing a 16-part series of a programme for a homegrown lifestyle channel (where the aforementioned person also hosted a show) is what Discovery spends on just one episode for its programmes. Though Johri refuses to go on record, the Indian content that the channel brings to its viewers costs, according to an insider, anywhere between Rs 40-50 crore to create. This is not very different from the cost of a big-budget Bollywood film.

Stay fresh
The idea is to hook the customers with new shows. “We always stick to our core promise of satisfying the curiosity of our audiences,” says Johri. Time Warp, a programme that premiered last month, answers, for instance, through cutting edge high-speed photography in extremely slow motion, what exactly happens when a person gets a blow in the boxing ring, bullet passes through an apple and just how a dog uses its tongue to drink milk from its bowl.

Come June and Discovery will also bring to the plate Extreme Bodies, a show which will take a look at how the human body can sometimes challenge and push even nature to extremes. From miraculous twins sharing one body to the tallest, oldest and the fattest individuals all over the world, the programme studies how the human body adapts to inexplicable changes. “We are always looking at ways to answer most of the questions that come to the human mind,” says Johri.

Discovery, in fact, plans to launch three new channels and has already applied to the government for permission. These are: Discovery Science, Discovery Turbo and Discovery Hi-definition. While Discovery Science concentrates on popular science, Turbo is focused on creating male-centric programmes including gadgets, mechanisms and so on. Rivals see it as a strategy to guard Discovery’s flanks. In the past too, Discovery has thwarted channels with a similar strategy. When National Geographic started catching up, it launched Animal Planet as a rival. This left Discovery untouched. Says Tarun Nigam, executive director, India (north) and Pakistan, Starcom Worldwide, “Discovery, with its international content, as a product has evolved from showcasing mere wildlife and risen to include technology and content about the cultural diversities.”

Of course, the demand for India-specific programmes was always strong. As a result, whenever Discovery worldwide commissions a new series, the India team is involved to see if there could be an India angle. Often, there is international buy-in for the India angle because of the growing interest in the country. The result is there to see. Initially, Discovery had only one programme dedicated to India, Discover India, on Saturday at 9:00 pm. Since then, Indian content has risen sharply. Even Atlas, which is a documentary on various countries, has an Indian episode.

“We map our audiences after thorough research and then start our schedule accordingly,” explains Johri. “Even as we speak,” he adds, “we know our content for 2010.” The daily division of programming is intelligent too; while morning slots are reserved for light programming (nature and travel, for instance), by evening the content is more “male-centric”. There has to be a wow factor, feels Johri, and that’s a reason why all shows slated for a release go through a thorough test in the Discovery office in Delhi. “We see the shows ourselves, discuss its merits, garner feedback from every team (including sales and advertising) and then put the show on air,” explains Johri who adds that all this exercise to “test shows before airing them takes six months”.

Amongst the channels of its genre, Discovery has the widest reach. It is available in 36 million cable homes and another seven million direct-to-home homes. Its programmes, of course, are available also in Hindi. This has added to its reach and acceptance, especially in the North. Still, it has no plans to get into other regional languages.

Keep it short
A unique strategy of Discovery is to keep its serials short. On Discovery Travel & Living — for instance, Indian series like The Great Indian Wedding, Indian Rendezvous, Manish Arora’s Adventures of a Lady Tailor — no series goes beyond six episodes. “The best of shows from Discovery are restricted to 50 episodes and it’s the reason why the channel, despite being present for the past so many years, looks so fresh even today,” says Johri. It’s the sole reason why Johri feels the fatigue hasn’t still set in the bouquet of channels offered by Discovery. “We nurture each programme and the research is very thorough.”

According to Johri, a programme with a minimum of six episodes takes a year to get made. It’s also the reason why the channel’s time slot for its various channels (including Travel & Living, Animal Planet and Discovery) from 7 am to 1 am sees advertising spots invariably sold out. “We have the highest number of brands and 80 per cent of our programmes are comfortably sold out,” adds Johri. Over 400 brands cutting across sectors advertise on the Discovery channels. In fact, according to a media planner, “Approximate ad spends in the overall infotainment space is Rs 250 crore and the Discovery bouquet is 60 per cent of this spend.” He notes that for the niche bouquet that Discovery offers, a 10-second ad spot rate would be Rs 2,000 easily.

Discovery’s new tagline ‘The World is Awesome’ could well be the audience mantra too.