Tom Keaveny

April 2008

Earlier this year, Discovery Channel launched its first print initiative, teaming with Readers Digest Asia to launch Discovery Channel Magazine in markets across the Asia-Pacific region. The magazine adds to Discovery Networks Asia’s portfolio of seven networks, reaching 346 million cumulative subscribers, and a host of online and mobile offerings. Tom Keaveny, the executive VP and managing director of the company, tells TV Asia Pacific about plans for extending the Discovery brand in this fast-growing market.

TV ASIA PACIFIC: What are the opportunities for growth for your portfolio of networks?

KEAVENY: We’ve got Discovery, Animal Planet, Discovery Science, Discovery Travel & Living, Discovery Home & Health, Discovery Real Time and Discovery HD. We don’t look at [them] as just TV channels. We’re a content organization, and we tell amazing stories and we believe our content will work well on TV and online and, now, in print [with Discovery Channel Magazine]. We’ve got Discovery Channel on [airlines]. If you’re on a bus you can go onto a WAP site. You can take Discovery anywhere, you can do anything with it, but we’ve got to be true to the core brand and what it stands for.

When you’ve got seven [channels], you can cross-promote and create this ecosystem. Are you going to cannibalize your audience? No. It’s just proved to me there’s an insatiable demand for quality television.

TV ASIA PACIFIC: How do you cross-promote?

KEAVENY: We’re looking at portfolio management. They’re individual channels with their own integrity and programming and lineups and marketing. We’re not naïve enough to believe that someone will wake up in the morning and turn on Discovery Channel and watch it until they go to bed. That doesn’t happen. The team has to have a portfolio perspective, based on audience data and instinct and flair, redirecting people around the schedule. It’s latitudinal and longitudinal, across the different portfolios. It benefits us and it’s also a service for the viewers, the readers, the online users. It’s not just about what’s good for Discovery, but about what’s good for the portfolio. That’s key for a multi-brand, multichannel organization.

TV ASIA PACIFIC: How is the lifestyle bouquet performing?

KEAVENY: Travel & Living is great. It allows us to speak to different demographics, which is really important for this ecosystem we’ve got. We’re a media organization and we can schedule accordingly and we can reach new demographics. [Asia is] a good market for tourism advertising. [Travel & Living] rates well. It’s doing well in ad sales. We’re happy with the way that’s going.

TV ASIA PACIFIC: What about the HD rollout?

KEAVENY: Japan was the first market [for the full HD channel] outside the U.S., on December 13, 2005. We’ve now got a block in Korea. We’re also in Singapore and Hong Kong. Where there’s an HD platform, we’re on it. For us, it’s brand defining. If we didn’t go high definition, it would be like someone working for a food channel and not liking to eat, or someone working at ESPN and not liking sports. Every market we go to now, we have an HD discussion. We’ve become synonymous with HD.

TV ASIA PACIFIC: Will Discovery’s eco-friendly channel Planet Green expand to Asia?

KEAVENY: I’d like to [launch the 24-hour channel]. We need to see how it goes. It’s starting as a block on Discovery Channel in prime time this April. We’re looking for partners on that at the moment.

TV ASIA PACIFIC: What are you doing in terms of original productions?

KEAVENY: We get world-class content from the U.S. as well as from Europe and Latin America. But there is a return path. There was History of Singapore. There will be [content for] the Beijing Olympics, where we’ve had unfettered access to major construction [of facilities for the games]. We do local production in Taiwan, Australia and China and Japan. We’ve got Atlas: Japan coming up this year, and that’s in high definition. The other thing we do is the First Time Filmmaker Awards. We are in the most populous region in the world. There has got to be more talent here than anywhere else in the world. We had a First Time Mobile Filmmaker Awards with Nokia. We work with the Media Development Authority and the EDB [Economic Development Board] in Singapore, FINAS in Malaysia, GIO in Taiwan, Beijing TV and Shanghai Media Group. There are so many stories here that haven’t been told that are globally relevant.

TV ASIA PACIFIC: You spent several years working with Discovery in Latin America and Europe. How was the transition to the Asian operation?

KEAVENY: One thing I’ve noticed is the amount of congruency. They’re all different, but it’s amazing how similar they are in certain respects. And this region has everything: the second-biggest economy in the world, the youngest economies, the most populous country, the largest Muslim nation, the smallest continent. Monopolies, multiplayer markets, telcos. It’s got everything.