John Hendricks and the Power of Discovery
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Larry Satkowiak
The power of the television documentary first hit me in 1980 with Carl Sagan’s Cosmos on PBS. I was hooked on the many PBS science programs shown at the time and still have the accompanying books on my shelf. In the early 1980s, John Hendricks had seen these same programs and thought that cable could become the platform for similar programming based on science, nature, and history – he called it the Discovery Channel. However, the 30-year-old entrepreneur had his doubts. Would someone else with deep pockets have the same idea? Would a sufficient number of people watch his programming and make it work? Today, it is hard to believe that Discovery came close to bankruptcy in its early days. The fact that Discovery persevered to become the powerhouse it is today, is a tribute to a small group of investors and an entrepreneur who put everything on the line with his unrelenting passion for the vision.
(Larry Satkowiak is president and CEO of The Cable Center, the nonprofit educational arm of the cable industry. The Center preserves cable’s enduring contributions to society, strengthens relationships between cable and academia and unites the industry around the advancement of exceptional customer service. www.cablecenter.org)