Marjorie Kaplan

TV Real Weekly, March 19, 2008

President and General Manager

Animal Planet Media

Animal Planet in the U.S. has recently undergone a massive re-branding, and leading its new efforts is Marjorie Kaplan, the president and general manager of Animal Planet Media. Her goals for the refreshed network are to “reopen the vision for the brand and really go after entertainment with a capital E,” she says, “still with a commitment to content that’s core to being part of the Discovery family.” Sitting at the helm of such a project is an enormous challenge for any executive, but Kaplan has had plenty of experience within the industry to prepare her for just such a task.

Kaplan’s path to her current role at the head of Animal Planet Media “was not exactly a straight-line trajectory,” she says. She has held positions in the advertising business at Ogilvy & Mather on the account-management side, was on the brand-management side at what was then General Foods, now known as Kraft, and served as the executive VP at Lancit Media Entertainment, the Emmy Award-winning producer of children’s programs including Reading Rainbow and The Puzzle Place, which was her first foray into the content side of media.

When Discovery Communications purchased a minority-equity stake in Lancit in September 1996, Kaplan became responsible for managing the relationship between the two companies. She was then tapped by Discovery to launch Discovery Kids in 1997, and lead the network to 14 daytime Emmy nominations in 2006. When former NBC Universal executive David Zaslav joined Discovery Communications in January 2007, Kaplan was tapped to run Animal Planet.

Today, Kaplan is responsible for the strategic direction and oversees day-to-day operations for Animal Planet Media, a multimedia venture that includes the Animal Planet television network, animalplanet.com, the pet-adoption site Petfinder.com and PetsIncredible.com, which produces pet-training videos. Her further responsibilities include working with researchers to better understand the audience, the potential audience, and coming up with new ways to engage them across multiple platforms.

She calls her current role “both a creative challenge and a privilege,” and notes that it is a “powerful creative opportunity to develop and oversee content that is as deeply engaging as animal content can be.” Kaplan understands the impact of the network’s programs, and comments on how humans connect to animals in a way that is deeply engrossing and also highly entertaining. “The new Animal Planet will, we hope, work through media the way animals work directly with you. Which is, you’ll feel before you even know you’ve thought something. It’s really about grabbing you, making you feel instinctually, getting you in the gut,” says Kaplan.

A show that did just this and captured a wide audience is Meerkat Manor, which is a breakout hit for the channel and marked a shift toward the direction Animal Planet is going with its new programming. New docu-soap offerings, similar to the character-driven plotlines of Meerkat Manor, are Escape to Chimp Eden and Lemur Kingdom. New pet entertainment programs include Petfinder, Groomer Has It and Clinically Wild: Alaska, with unscripted dramas such as Whale Wars, After the Attack and A Year with Lions also launching on the recently revamped network.

“I have always been an animal lover,” says Kaplan, “but I have not always had the opportunity to love this many animals. In this job, I’ve been able to continue to love my dog, but also to really fall in love with other creatures and with the whole planet of creatures. It’s an extraordinary opportunity.”

—By Kristin Brzoznowski