Animal Planet

World Screen Weekly, February 28, 2008

COUNTRY: U.S.

LAUNCH DATE: October 1, 1996

NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS: The network can be seen in 94 million homes across the U.S., as well as in more than 160 countries worldwide.

OWNERSHIP: Animal Planet Media, a unit of Discovery Communications.

DESCRIPTION: The 24/7 channel, which is dedicated to exploring the relationship between humans and animals, recently relaunched with a new tagline, “Same Planet. Different World.”

PRESIDENT & GENERAL MANAGER, ANIMAL PLANET MEDIA: Marjorie Kaplan

SENIOR VP, PROGRAMMING & SCHEDULING: Rick Holzman

VP, DEVELOPMENT: Charlie Foley

VP, DEVELOPMENT: Marc Etkind

SENIOR VP, MARKETING: Victoria Lowell

PROGRAMMING STRATEGY: Last month, Animal Planet decided to refresh its look and feel, not only to catch up to how far the television landscape has evolved since the channel’s launch, but also because the “strength, power and compelling nature of the content that we were talking about wasn’t captured in the [previous] branding,” says Marjorie Kaplan, the president and general manager of Animal Planet Media.

The network has also put forth a new slogan, “Same Planet. Different World,” to signify a change in its programming. “Our audience loves us and people who don’t even watch us love us,” explains Kaplan. “This is about saying, ‘we’re everything you love and we’re different; we’re everything you love and we’re even better.’” With this new tagline, the network hopes to maintain its appeal among families and children watching with their parents, but rather than shifting its target audience altogether, Animal Planet has decided to hone in particularly on its core adult audience.

To capture the attention of this demographic, Animal Planet is rolling out a host of new original series that tap into the instincts that drive us all—fear, hunger, pleasure, nurture. In terms of acquisitions, Kaplan notes that though the channel does have some, “a lot of what we’re doing is original because we’re looking to reinvent how people look at natural history and how people look at animal content.”

There will be returning favorites to the network as well, including the hit Meerkat Manor, which is a character-driven docusoap centering on the lives and drama of a family of meerkats. The show broke new ground with its innovative methods of filming, which has allowed researchers to uncover aspects of meerkat life never seen before, including their lives within the burrows. Kaplan says that it’s “a fabulous show and was one of the shows that gave us a clue to where we thought this channel could go. It was a reinvention of natural history and it was also competitive television. It tells great stories and it has great characters.” Another returning favorite is Orangutan Island, which, like Meerkat Manor, blends traditional documentary filming with dramatic narration.

In addition to its linear offerings, the channel is ramping up its new-media content. The Animal Planet website recently relaunched with a new skin, and Kaplan assures that it will “continue to become increasingly more immersive in where we’re looking for the brand to be.” Beyond just broadband, Kaplan also notes that the company is “looking at 360-degree content on just about everything we do.”

WHAT’S NEW: Among the slate of original programs new to the network are the docusoaps Escape to Chimp Eden and Lemur Kingdom. Escape to Chimp Eden explores the happenings at a South African sanctuary, which is dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of chimpanzees. Lemur Kingdom tracks the lives of two neighboring gangs of ringtail lemurs—the Furies and the Graveyard Gang—who fight to defend their respective territories. Each gang is ruled by a dominant female, and the series explores the lives of these lemurs through a year of lost infants, forest fires, violent eviction, mating season and more.

Other new titles in the network’s lineup are Whale Wars, which spotlights the controversial whaling trade and the tactics used by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society; Groomer Has It, a new competition series featuring 15 of America’s best amateur and professional groomers; and A Year with Lions, which follows large-predator expert Dave Salmoni to southern Africa to spend a year among these large cats.

WEBSITE: www.animalplanet.com

—By Kristin Brzoznowski