Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2022

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the 1980s—the early days of cable television—John Hendricks got stuck on an idea he couldn't shake: to create a channel that would teach people cool things in an entertaining way. In college he had seen hours of documentaries on history, science, and outer space; and he figured if he was interested in them, others would be too. So around the age of 30, he left a comfortable consulting business to begin a delicate juggling act: leasing a satellite, licensing content, and wooing cable distributors, all the while pounding the pavement to finance it all. Today, Discovery reaches more than 400 million homes around the world, and John is still in the content business, having launched Curiosity Stream in 2015. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	When you leave home, can you ever really go back?
0:12.0	Made a version!
0:13.0	Soccer legend Leo Messi and I both left Argentina as kids.
0:17.0	You know you're that piece of a puzzle that doesn't fit anywhere.
0:20.0	To so many immigrants, football is a way to reconnect.
0:23.0	Listen to the last cop in the embedded podcast feed
0:26.0	to hear the latest collaboration from MPR and Fuduro Studios.
0:30.0	I remember we had a meeting.
0:35.0	You know, we told her, bring your ideas.
0:38.0	And so we were just going around the room.
0:40.0	It was the classic what if me, what if we did this?
0:43.0	And this young programmer, Steve Cheskin, and he said,
0:47.0	what if he said, you know how independent TV stations
0:51.0	have like Marilyn Monroe, Wake, or John Wayne Wake.
0:55.0	He says they have theme weeks.
0:56.0	And he says, what if we had Shark Week?
1:00.0	And we kind of all said, yeah, they all kind of looked at me.
1:04.0	And I said, I think it's a great idea.
1:06.0	The idea was as simple as that.
1:08.0	But as profound as that, you know.
	...

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