Discovery’s Rich Ross

The group president talks about his vision for Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and Science Channel and his desire to program shows that reflect diversity, have a bit of an aspirational quality and help viewers better understand the world around them.

TV REAL: When you first joined Discovery, what did you consider to be the strengths of the channel and brand?
ROSS: Discovery had a long history of being a purpose-driven channel that meant something to people, and that to me was really important. When I was asked to join, it was very clear to me that returning to do more in the world of documentaries and activating viewers to do something about the world around them was an important opportunity. It would also possibly affect the brand, which people felt strongly about and I wanted them to watch more. We knew there was an opportunity to tell stories we were proud of and were not just ratings-getters but on-brand, great stories, and authentic, wherever possible. We did that right from January 2015 and we had a record-setting year. This year is building upon that, which is exciting.

TV REAL: What did you feel needed to be changed?
ROSS: [We needed to reinforce our] message for authenticity in storytelling but also respect for producers. We needed to give them the time and the money to do their best work, because if you are just telling them how fast you need something and exactly how you need it, then it’s probably not surprising that the result may not be as authentic as it should be. You always have to look at the root cause for what goes on and often the root cause was people fearing risk and demanding expediency. It’s not that I didn’t realize that things needed to be done on a budget or on a schedule, but we have some incredible storytellers in the business, and they clearly said to me, even before I started, Give us a shot to tell our story. That is the job that I have always had throughout my career: give people shots to tell their stories and do it in a way that they are proud of. And the results continue to speak for themselves.

TV REAL: Given that you have extensive contacts within the creative community, what new voices are you bringing to Discovery?
ROSS: What I’ve learned, frankly in every job I’ve had, is that there are three categories of new voices. The first is folks that haven’t worked at the network, that are legendary storytellers, but operate in the sphere. Louie Psihoyos won an Oscar for The Cove; we brought him on with his film Racing Extinction. He would be the first person to say Discovery was not where he would have initially looked, but he felt strongly that we had put out a call for what we wanted and we would be incredibly supportive. And his film was the highest-rated documentary in three years on cable television. That’s a perfect example, or Tom Fontana [Oz, Borgia] and Barry Levinson [Diner, The Natural, Rain Man] who came aboard Killing Fields, a show that has come out really strong this year. They had never done unscripted work, they had done legendary scripted television and films, but they felt that the stories we were trying to tell with the producers who had brought in the property would give them something new to flex different muscles. They worked really hard and came out with something that is incredible and doing really well. So this first group is the likely suspects but ones that had not worked here.

The second group, which I think is great, is that there are a lot of lesser-known production companies, but very successful ones, that hadn’t been working for Discovery for some time and now they are.

And lastly it’s new voices, for example, a small company called Park Slope Productions from Brooklyn. They are the producers of Alaskan Bush People. It’s one of the top shows certainly for men, but for all people. The producers are young and very ambitious and this was their first big show. It was an opportunity for us to say we don’t treat you any differently from the big guys, we just treat big stories the same way—we promote them and we support them.

TV REAL: You mentioned Killing Fields. It is riveting! How did that come together and how did Tom and Barry become involved?
ROSS: Crime had been a very big element of the channel up to about three years ago. My boss, Mr. Zaslav, [David Zaslav, president and CEO of Discovery Communications] was very clear that he didn’t understand one thing: if channels like Animal Planet or Science Channel or Investigation Discovery could be launched off the back of Discovery, why couldn’t their genres—animals, science and investigation—be brought back into Discovery Channel? So he gave me the road map. We knew that crime on Discovery had to be about the job and the process and not about the victim. While the story would be emotional, the emotion would have to come from those who seek the answers. So Sirens Media, a company out of the D.C. area who had done a lot of work in crime, brought in the show and it was very focused on the milieu of these areas where people dump bodies, which was captivating. Originally it was going to be an anthology, with some finished stories in each series, and maybe story arcs across six or seven episodes. Denise Contis, who runs our original series group, said, Well, that is well and good, but relevancy is always with the characters. I also knew that it had to be about the characters, if not about the place, and I am the president of the Tom Fontana fan club, and all I wanted was to reach out to him to see if he would be interested. He had never done an unscripted show. He partnered with Barry Levinson, who is an Oscar-winning director [Rain Man] and TV producer. They saw the footage of the detective we follow in Killing Fields, Rodie Sanchez, and they said, We’re in! So having the combination of the team at Sirens who know how to do this, and the intensity and elegance of what Tom and Barry bring to it, and focus on character, to me was a dream. We ultimately covered one story, one murder. As you know from the show, fortunately there is a lot of story, and we’ve had a very substantial audience. We went into it without the knowledge of where it is going to end up. When you tell crime stories from the documentary standpoint, you are telling how it happened. We thought it would be exciting to tell a story in real time. We had an active tip line but it was done in a way that was not exploitative. We didn’t want to do Cops. I’m very proud that we have the adrenaline of a Discovery series in an area that had been successful—true crime and the world around it—and now is back being successful.

TV REAL: Often in these shows the presence of the cameras alters people’s behavior. But the authenticity of Rodie and his partner Aubrey is amazing. You really feel that you are looking at two ordinary guys that want to solve this crime.
ROSS: It’s funny, my dad is 89, and as you know, a lot of the stuff I’ve done in my career he’s wanted to watch but was not necessarily for him. When Killing Fields premiered, I was out to dinner with my husband and my phone rang. It was my dad, who never uses his cell phone, and he said, “Oh my God, I just watched Killing Fields! I felt that I was in the bayou with the detectives. I thought I had seen all these types of shows, but with this one, I was right there!” And you’re saying the same thing, so for me that is a combination of the freedom of the producers and of the characters to tell their story without being forced, because we don’t know the answer. We’re not saying to them, OK, speed it up so we can get to the end, because we don’t know the end. They are just doing their job, and at a time when police are under such [scrutiny], in light of so much happening, if it were not for the police and the safety they provide for us, we would be in big trouble. And I’m glad that in a very organic way, we are supporting police, showing their inexplicable passion, considering the unbelievable odds against them, to go out there and find answers.

TV REAL: What are some of the other shows you are bringing to Discovery?
ROSS: This is the year that you will see spin-offs of our big shows: we announced a spin-off of the granddaddy of all unscripted shows, the one that started it all, Deadliest Catch. We have Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove and Deadliest Job Interview. When you look at our shows, whether Killing Fields or Diesel Brothers, they feel relevant, the characters are relatable, the casts are diverse and so are the places we shoot. I don’t understand why aspiration and inspiration can’t be built into shows. We have enough tough times for people to deal with in the real world. Discovery shows the real world, but it’s a real world where hopefully people will [find something that] helps them understand their world—and not just men but also their families. When we looked at the census we found that the percentage of men 18 to 34 living at home now is nearly 60 percent. People ask me, How do you reach younger men? People are expecting younger men, the Millennials, to be living alone and thereby making their own entertainment choices. But so many are still living at home. So what is more likely to happen is, dad turns on the TV, mom or stepmom and girlfriend step into the room and sit down if there is something for them, too. And for the sons it’s not about their laptops in their bedrooms, it’s about a shared common experience. Discovery can provide that, has always done that, and it’s a part of American culture to be able to create that. So that’s what we’re doing.

TV REAL: How does scripted programming fit into the mix?
ROSS: It was toes in the water in the past, but I wanted to create a consistent pipeline and look at them as specials, with maybe 10 to 12 hours each. Scripted needs to be really consistent with who we are. Harley and the Davidsons is about the iconic Harley-Davidson and the story of these two brothers and their friend who created something that made Steve Jobs look like he wasn’t brilliant! But they did it at the turn of the century and they did everything faster and smarter without any of the modern tools that we come to expect and they created a brand that is global in its appeal. The company is now having some challenges and The Wall Street Journal recently wrote a piece about the challenge of encouraging people to buy new bikes versus used bikes. They had the same problem back in the 1930s, when they had to sell new bikes and realized people loved old bikes. To think that almost 100 years later the company is facing the same conundrum speaks to the relatability of the story.

It’s also been reported that we have a very big true-crime anthology called Manifesto, which is about catching the Unabomber. It’s the story of a beat cop from Philly, who went back to school to learn forensics and linguistics, and figured out who Ted Kaczynski was. He actually went into the woods and tracked him down when the case was cold for almost 20 years.

Discovery has the leading motor shows, so a scripted series about bikes makes sense. We have true-crime shows, so Manifesto makes sense. I don’t really believe scripted should be one-offs and you should expect people to find them. The universe is littered with failures when channels try to say who they are through the incidental scheduling of related shows. I’d rather people said, Oh I get it, and they watch it even though it’s fiction instead of nonfiction we do.

TV REAL: You now oversee Science Channel and Animal Planet in addition to Discovery.
ROSS: Initially, the great thing about Science Channel, which had record ratings last year, too, was the breadth of the offering. Science has never been more important and technology is the obsession of every Millennial, or God knows, my 81-year-old mother, too! Her friends play Canasta and my mother goes to the Apple Store!

Since Science Channel is the one place you can go for everything from pop science to answers to the big and small questions, as we did with true-crime and Killing Fields, I wanted to connect science back to Discovery Channel. We launched our first-ever Science Channel Weekend on Discovery and we are showcasing Academy Award nominee Nathaniel Kahn’s film Telescope. It aired on Discovery and Science Channel on the same weekend. It was a great opportunity to continue to hone the broader world of science, space and engineering and at the same time make sure that we tie it back to Discovery because that’s where it comes from, and science entertainment is helpful to Discovery. I have a new general manager at Science Channel, Marc Etkind, and he is doing a great job.

We’re going through somewhat of a revamp of Animal Planet and the reason is to make sure that we are programming the right nights. This is because we know it’s a very big brand on television so we are busy greenlighting shows that are more for the whole family, more diverse, whether it’s pets or wild animals. And we’re lucky we still have the second-highest-rated show on Super Bowl Sunday with the Puppy Bowl.

One of the big issues I want to tackle involves kids and Millennials. While they might seem more connected environmentally [than previous generations], they are less connected to the animal world, outside their own pets, which is very inward thinking. And parents, when they don’t see their own kids activated, don’t activate. I believe Animal Planet is for the whole family and when parents see their kids excited about saving wildlife and respecting animal welfare it’s just so vital to humanity, and I think we have an opportunity with it.

TV REAL: As people have so many viewing options, how can a linear channel remain relevant and continue to attract viewers?
ROSS: Television can still be very much a community experience and a watercooler-fed obsession. We’re seeing, with our ratings at the highest we have ever had them, that if you create programming that people want to watch and don’t want to miss and then want to talk about, that’s where social is activating in your favor. Whether a show is watched live or within a couple of days, people want to be relevant. And unless that ever changes I can’t imagine television scheduled the way we do [won’t] be a compelling opportunity. We proved with the highest-rated Shark Week of all time that people want to talk about Shark Week the next day, or they want to talk about Killing Fields the next day, or Gold Rush the next day.

TV REAL: How much more important is a strong brand in today’s multiplatform landscape than it was ten years ago?
ROSS: It’s both the brand and the destination. When I started at Discovery I said to my boss, I think there is a lot of programming out there that could be on Discovery and my goal is to make programming that is only on Discovery. It’s something that I saw when I was at Disney Channel—yes, there was a lot of programming like it, but we wanted people to say, Disney Channel is where you find it. For 30 years, Discovery has been copycatted by a lot of people. The aspiration that we have for our programming, whether it’s Gold Rush or Racing Extinction, or Harley and the Davidsons, is that I want people to not only say, Of course Discovery would do it, but, I can find this only on Discovery. That’s still an aspiration to have, it’s one that we’re acting upon and I think it’s paying off.

TV REAL: I remember speaking to David Zaslav years ago, and at the time the strategy was to only have clips of shows available online or on other platforms besides linear. What do you offer now and how has the thinking changed?
ROSS: Last fall we launched Discovery GO, which is an omnibus app where you can get all the Discovery family of networks and shows. We have much greater visibility of our product but it’s also highly curated. David feels very strongly not only about being paid for the value of our programming, but also about curating what we have. We’re not a name in a phone book; we’re a brand that matters. So we are now much more available, which helps us, over time, get data on what people watch. We’re not looking backwards, we just want to be paid for our value and be available as conveniently as possible in light of that.

TV REAL: At times, when I watch TV, I don’t mind having a channel curate a selection for me, instead of having to search for individual programs. Am I the only one who feels that way?
ROSS: Oh, no, we wouldn’t have had record ratings in 2015 if people didn’t respect how [a linear channel] works. And our Live+3 numbers are even bigger, but that often stems from the curated experience in the first place. People are just so busy that watching a show on the night that it airs may be challenging. But we’re seeing across the board that our biggest shows have the biggest catch-up, so people are responding. There are very few networks or shows that don’t follow that pattern: the bigger the show, the bigger the catch-up; the smaller the show, the less the catch-up. People are not voting that they don’t want to watch a show, they are voting that they don’t have time to watch it yet, but they will later that night or on anther night, mostly on a night when the shows are less compelling. Curation is vitally important and so is brand authority. I want people to watch Discovery and say, This it the type of show that I know what Discovery will do with. They have to believe in our brand and that is more important than ever.

TV REAL: What is your vision for Discovery Channel?
ROSS: What was very important to me was that while Discovery appeals to men, it should also be inclusive of the family, and by family I don’t mean family with little kids, but more today’s modern family, which is an adult family. So it was important that shows have strong female characters and strong diverse characters. That’s why in 2015, yes, our ratings were up among men, but we were substantially up among women and Hispanic and African-American audiences. It’s important as we move forward that diversity inclusion be part of our message.