{"id":9118,"date":"2016-09-07T10:03:44","date_gmt":"2016-09-07T14:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/curiositystreams-elizabeth-hendricks-north\/"},"modified":"2016-09-09T09:33:49","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T13:33:49","slug":"curiositystreams-elizabeth-hendricks-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/curiositystreams-elizabeth-hendricks-north\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Hendricks North Talks CuriosityStream"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth Hendricks North, president and CEO of CuriosityStream,\u00a0tells\u00a0<\/em>TV Real\u00a0about the platform\u2019s progress thus far and its plans for the future.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the 1980s, John Hendricks set out to create a space in the nascent cable landscape exclusively for lovers of factual programming. Last year, he embarked on a similar quest, this time in the digital arena. After retiring as chairman of Discovery Communications, Hendricks founded CuriosityStream, an internet-delivered on-demand platform serving up documentaries for a monthly subscription fee. With Hendricks\u2019s daughter, Elizabeth Hendricks North, as president and CEO, CuriosityStream has been expanding internationally, embarking on original productions\u2014most recently commissioning the three-part\u00a0Deep Time History<\/em>\u2014and steadily building its membership base.<\/p>\n

\"ElizabethTV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0When you launched the platform in March of last year, what gaps did you want to fill in the marketplace?
\nNORTH:<\/strong>\u00a0There wasn\u2019t a service that was dedicated to documentary streaming, particularly the kind of high science and technology documentaries that we wanted to showcase on CuriosityStream. We also wanted to make sure that there was an ad-free subscription source for quality nonfiction programming.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0What are some of the things you\u2019ve learned about your subscriber base since you\u2019ve been up and running?
\nNORTH:<\/strong>\u00a0They enjoy watching on Roku, that\u2019s been a great platform for us. We\u2019re surprised at how many watch on mobile as well. You wouldn\u2019t think that a documentary would be something that people would want to watch on their phone or their iPad, but apparently that\u2019s very popular as well. We\u2019ve also learned that the [average] age of our subscriber has gone down significantly since launch, so we\u2019re pulling in a younger and younger group watching CuriosityStream. When we started off we were around the 55 age range; now our average is 33. It means that younger generations are just as interested in factual content as the older generations, which were the mainstay audiences of documentary TV. When our head of programming, Steve Burns, was at Science Channel and Nat Geo, his demographic was 55 and up.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0The OTT space seems to get more crowded by the day. What were the biggest challenges for you, first in getting the service operational, and then making people aware of it?
\nNORTH:<\/strong>\u00a0The largest challenges were just to make sure that we were on as many platforms as possible, the back-end design and constantly improving the platform. We have a redesign across all of the platforms coming up soon. It is hard to be a new business, to let people know that you exist. But Facebook has been a really good platform for us to reach our target audience. [From those ads] people know, if you are interested in documentaries, if you like these types of programs, you probably would like watching CuriosityStream.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0What are you doing on the original programming front? What kinds of shows are you looking to invest in, and will international co-pros factor into your strategy?
\nNORTH:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019re still young, and we are continuing to grow. We are still heavy on acquisitions and licensing, just because that\u2019s more affordable for us at this time. But we\u2019re certainly very interested in good-quality co-productions that we can do, particularly with filmmakers that have experience in creating great CGI and science and technology programs. We had success this summer with\u00a0Destination: Jupiter<\/em>, a show following the Juno mission. We were able to work with a British production company for that one. We\u2019re looking for good partners on the kinds of programs that we\u2019re seeing our subscribers are interested in. A lot of our subscribers want to see more of the science and technology shows that aren\u2019t on television anymore. I always tell people this, and they\u2019re surprised: the most popular program on our service last year was\u00a0The Secrets of Quantum Physics<\/em>. It was recently replaced by a show about gravitational waves. Our audience is quite sophisticated! They like high-minded science programs, especially if you can find ways of telling the narrative so that it\u2019s easy for anybody to grasp. I\u2019m not a physicist, but I enjoyed watching\u00a0The Secrets of Quantum Physics<\/em>\u00a0and the one about gravitational waves because it\u2019s all about storytelling. If you can tell a good story, you can make science, technology, anything, really fascinating and easy to grasp.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0What about your acquisitions strategy? Where are you sourcing content from?
\nNORTH:<\/strong>\u00a0We have a good partnership with the BBC, so that provides a lot of great content for the U.S. We\u2019re trying to work with them to get more programming that can be available in other countries worldwide. We work with a lot of European producers, a lot of French producers, NHK in Japan, ZDF Enterprises has been a great partner. We\u2019re particularly open to anyone that has a great library of shows that they\u2019ve already created and are looking to distribute to a wider audience. That\u2019s really important to us, particularly since we have a worldwide service. If they have the SVOD rights, that\u2019s a win-win for everybody.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0Why did you opt for a tiered pricing strategy?
\nNORTH:<\/strong>\u00a0If you\u2019re streaming SD you\u2019re not sending as much data, so it\u2019s less expensive for us to stream, and we can offer a lower price. If you\u2019re streaming high definition and 4K, it costs a little bit more. 4K is twice as much data as HD, so the pricing reflects the burden on us to get that data to the customer.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0How has the 4K take-up been?
\nNORTH:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s been OK. It\u2019s still a small market. What was most important to us was making sure we got there as quickly as possible. And we pushed ourselves to get the technology down. So that was quite a challenge for our team, and I\u2019m proud of our group of engineers, who were able to figure out how to stream 4K. It\u2019s hard to do, and we\u2019re glad that we have a service that can offer that tier.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0What are your plans for CuriosityStream globally?
\nNORTH:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019re already available internationally\u2014we launched in September 2015. You can be in any country and log in. We decided consciously from the start to look toward worldwide distribution. So we\u2019ve been [acquiring] as many [worldwide] rights as we can get. It took a little bit longer than we expected. We had to get the geo-blocking and the caching ready from a back-end perspective. But we are available worldwide. Since we\u2019re an English-language-only service, we\u2019re finding the strongest markets for us are English-speaking countries. Surprisingly, Scandinavia has been a strong market for us as well.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0What do you want to tell international doc producers who are keen to work with CuriosityStream?
\nNORTH:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019re looking forward to bringing to the table another option for people who are trying to get programs made and maybe they just need that one more partner to help them round out the budget. We\u2019re open to being that great producing partner that can help them do the quality science and technology shows they\u2019re looking to create.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president and CEO talks about the platform\u2019s progress thus far and its plans for the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":9119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,69],"tags":[258,1510],"class_list":["post-9118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-curiositystream","tag-elizabeth-hendricks-north","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nElizabeth Hendricks North Talks CuriosityStream - TVREAL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/curiositystreams-elizabeth-hendricks-north\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Elizabeth Hendricks North Talks CuriosityStream - TVREAL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The president and CEO talks about the platform\u2019s progress thus far and its plans for the future.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/curiositystreams-elizabeth-hendricks-north\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVREAL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-09-07T14:03:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-09-09T13:33:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2015\/09\/2016-09-07-North_Elizabeth.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/curiositystreams-elizabeth-hendricks-north\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/curiositystreams-elizabeth-hendricks-north\/\",\"name\":\"Elizabeth Hendricks North Talks CuriosityStream - TVREAL\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-09-07T14:03:44+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-09-09T13:33:49+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/curiositystreams-elizabeth-hendricks-north\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/curiositystreams-elizabeth-hendricks-north\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/curiositystreams-elizabeth-hendricks-north\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Elizabeth Hendricks North Talks CuriosityStream\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/\",\"name\":\"TVREAL\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\",\"name\":\"Mansha Daswani\",\"description\":\"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. 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