Going over to the dark side

Yesterday I sent an email to a number of my industry colleagues announcing this new blog, with the heading “Going over to the dark side”. A surprising number of responses expressed relief that I hadn’t taken a job with Discovery Communications, which is what they first assumed on reading the heading. It got me thinking about why the Discovery networks have got this reputation, even known as the Evil Empire among producers on both sides of the Atlantic. Sure they are financially successful; the trade press has been trumpeting how their profits are up this quarter. But how far has Discovery fallen from the dream that John Hendricks once shared with me when he was a guest at a Maryland Public TV executive retreat back in the early 1990s (before he became a gazillionaire and handed over the running of his empire to a succession of predatory bean counters). He said he began Discovery to give audiences the same level of quality documentaries he loved watching on PBS years earlier; series like Cosmos and Ascent of Man. That’s not to say that certain programs across the Discovery networks don’t still represent such quality, but they’ve become scarcer over the years and the best (like Planet Earth), are usually produced by the BBC in Britain.

Of course PBS was Hendricks’ model. It’s easy to forget that public television was the model for most of the factual cable networks; each skimming off a niche programming genre (DIY, cooking, history, arts, nature, travel and many more) inspired by programs previously successful on public television. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; had PBS remained the visionary trend-setter in factual programming it once was, instead of relying on icon series so old they creak, documentary programming wouldn’t be in its present parlous state and I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog (but that’s a topic for a later post).

The problem with the cablenets is that once they’d created a business around a single programming genre, they began to “strip-mine the ocean”, producing dozens of variants at different levels of quality until any uniqueness was dissipated. And once a particular genre lost its money-making luster, they began to cannibalize what other cablenets were doing. Hands up everyone who can tell much difference between History, Nat Geo and Discovery these days!. An occasional ‘tip of the iceberg’ quality show will attract critical acclaim and awards, but the majority lurk beneath the surface, an ocean-full of Mac-docs and Mac-reality (yes, there are some quality reality shows too) that fill screens and have as much nutrition as anything else in our Fast-Food Nation.

Some years ago, a top Discovery executive once told me that “the difference between an okay program and a great program is a pain-in-the-ass producer; and since my audience doesn’t know the difference, why should I put up with a pain-in-the-ass producer?” My 21-year-old son tells how he and his college friends like the Discovery & History channels of this world because they’re undemanding. The TV’s on in the background and they dip in and out; learn a few interesting things but can walk out in the middle without feeling they’ve missed something important. Media marketers love this model, breaking down viewing figures into 5-minute bites (it’s why pod casts are so popular). But is this something to be proud of? Few have yet woken up to the fact that this mass-commoditization of mac-media is as bad for quality media as fast food is for our health. But because the industry is run by those whose sole criterion for success is making money, no one cares.

Oh, dear! What does this say about America today? It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about media, banks, health-care or anything else; we’re forgetting to do our jobs. No matter what the industry, job #1 is to satisfy the customers, not the shareholders. When customers are satisfied, shareholders make money; that’s supposed to be why they invested in the first place (before the era of predatory capitalism). The job of health care is to keep people healthy; the job of banks is to loan people money; my job as a filmmaker is to create media (in whatever distribution form happens to be in vogue) that entertains, informs or educates (and sometimes all three together). The job of cablenets, and broadcasters, and VOD suppliers, and all of the other gatekeepers in our business, is to give their customers the very best programming they can give them, not siphon off the majority of revenue to satisfy shareholders. We’ve lost track of what it means to invest in companies; because we believe in what they do; no wonder the Recession hit!.

There’s always going to be a surfeit of mediocrity but it can’t be allowed to turn cancerous, eating away at the quality that remains. Mr. Hendricks, I remind you of what you said all those years ago; that you were inspired by quality. You still have the bully pulpit, even though you no longer own the business. What if Discovery Networks became a beacon for factual quality again, somewhere the best media creators aspired to be? Then people wouldn’t have to assume that “going to the dark side” was the same as joining Discovery Networks.