[Satellite News 10-13-11] As one of the most instantly recognizable global broadcasting brands, Discovery has aimed to be seen a pioneer in bringing 3-D TV content to households in the United States. Now, the broadcaster is turning its attention to international markets and hopes to establish a strong global presence in the near future.

   Discovery Communications Executive Vice President and Head of International Business Operations for Discovery Networks International John Honeycutt spoke with Satellite News about what lessons the changing broadcast landscape has provided throughout the last year and what potential it can generate by integrating social media platforms with its growth initiatives.

 

Honeycutt: I think a lot of people are feeling the same issues we feel. Clearly, the dis-aggregation and fragmentation of media are concerns for us. But, having said that, we can take a look at platforms like Facebook, which is almost trying to bring that fragmentation back together with a more cohesive user experience. It is important to hold onto content and to create environments with branding. We are looking at what business models are right and asking if it is right to be in several places, or just one place. There are a lot of people that want to figure this out, but there is not one clear solution emerging. There are more operational ideas being thrown out there. Issues of rights inside a complex media organization are topics that we have discussed, as well as new ways emerging for slicing and dicing content from a rights perspective. So, we have to look at what we take to these new means of distribution. There is a backend component as well. Mechanically and operationally, there are issues in how you handle that efficiently.

 

Honeycutt: If you want content consumed, then you need to go to where content is being consumed and Facebook has clearly done that. There are some good things that have happened from Facebook’s explosion and there are some things that I, personally, wish would be better. Security and safety are critical. I would love to be able to see safer content for children. A 12-year-old kid can see things that they shouldn’t and I would like to see Facebook take that issue more seriously. On the positive side, they have allowed us to connect to a worldwide community of fans that we can talk to and communicate with, and talk to them about our properties. That is important to us. We can use segmentation tools to target certain geographies. We can target fans in country and get them involved in the lead up to one of our shows. This can help boost ratings and Facebook can be a great tool for us to drive the main revenue model for the company.

 

Honeycutt: You have to manage your investment on what you perceive your return to be and also experiment. We have built viewer panels using Facebook. It cost us some money to do it, but if you look at the speed in which we can get information, versus convening an old-school viewer panel, you will see that there is a lot of value in that application. If you can suddenly get to talk to a lot of fans of content on an individualized basis and get real answers and data from them, it will produce absolute value. We don’t invest money into properties that have not had success.

 

Honeycutt: I think a couple of things have happened. We signed our first 3-D deals outside the United States with our biggest U.K. distribution partners BSkyB and Virgin Media, to provide their customers with access to a range of compelling 3D content. We have content from 3Net, which we have bought internationally. We also have content that we are producing ourselves as Discovery Networks International. One of the major differences this year is that Discovery Networks International is actually commissioning its own content.

 

Honeycutt: We will continue to do what we have done for years – identify market opportunities and invest the appropriate amount of effort in the opportunities that will grow over time. We are in the business of trying to get value from those opportunities. Value comes in a lot of different ways. It can come in the way of cash and also in being able to use products like 3-D TV and multi-screen broadcasting. 3-D TV is part of the conversation about the future. It is something you can use in negotiations. You can leverage it in affiliate negotiations. If I go to BSkyB with a product that they could use, it creates a win/win situation. The goal is to get in on the ground floor like we did with HD.

 

Honeycutt: Overall, we have invested roughly 200 million pounds ($314.5 million) in the United Kingdom each year. London is Discovery’s biggest office outside the United States and serves as the location for our main European media broadcast facility. We’re transmitting 65 24-hour European TV channels to over 181 million homes in 27 languages each year. The focus here in the United Kingdom is the manufacturing of all of these assets with file distribution and transcoding. This is an investment we made three to four years ago in the United States. That is now our investment in our United Kingdom facility. We don’t want to build them everywhere, but I think that at some point having a couple of locations to serve from is smarter. The management of all of those assets is a challenge. They are all separate audio and video assets with several sets of meta data. Tracking three separate pieces of information to create one package to send out and doing that across multiple facilities can get to be pretty complicated.