Photo: Donald Bland

Preparing the crab pot off the Aleutian Islands.

Discovery Channel Ranked First In Boldness

This story first appeared in November/December 2007

Don't call it a comeback. Local programmer Discovery Channel has been making hit shows for years. Shark Week is a perennial crowd pleaser and isn't showing its age even after two decades. Anything about dinosaurs garners big numbers. The channel even brought dung beetles onto the general population's radar and afforded the tiny beastie a touch of Atlas-pushing-the-Earth-up-a-mountain inspired dignity. The newly minted and well-received Planet Earth is as ambitious a televised adventure as it's ever attempted, canning footage of never-before-captured animal behaviors. A brand identity study from Beta Research shows public interest in the channel is extremely high, and among males it ranked first in quality, boldness, entertainment and original programming.

The Silver Spring, Md.-based programmer launched coast to coast in 1985 and has since gone gangbusters, currently reaching 94 million homes in the United States, making it the most widely distributed cable channel in the country, and grabbing another 235 million households worldwide.

And 2007 saw Discovery exhibiting thoroughbred stride, with four well-muscled shows eschewing four-legged, finned and furry stars to focus on biped forces of nature. The resulting viewing hours posted a programming trifecta: making the most of a niche nature market, exploring unclaimed programming territory and finding a way to please across generational and gender demographics. Providing the muscle to pull it off: Deadliest Catch—an ode to crab fishermen toiling in one of the world's most dangerous professions; Survivorman and Man vs. Wild—free verse from a man willing to get dropped into inhospitable territory with not much more than the clothes on his back; and Dirty Jobs—a love sonnet to the workers who get the most revolting jobs done so we don't have to. And the real surprise in all of this is the unbridled machismo taking center screen—big, sinewy men doing dirty, dangerous work.

The switch to shellfish from sharks as programming bait was a decision helped along by the Discovery Channel's president Jane Root, who overcame her initial response of "Crab fishing? Really?" to sign programming liquid gold: "And then I watched what these amazing fishermen went through and was hooked. It's as if we're exploring uncharted territory—the new Wild West. The danger is so vivid—and from the risks come high rewards."

And so came Deadliest Catch, the first riff on the time-proven "man versus nature" theme high school English teachers keep pounding into student's heads, making Captains Sig Hansen and Phil Harris and their crews, who face 40-foot freezing waves off Alaska's Aleutian Islands, household names. Catch's then-host (and Washington-area local), Mike Rowe, came to the boardroom table with another idea—let him get his fingernails dirty (150 Dirty Jobs in at this point, Rowe must have some horrifyingly dirty fingernails) apprenticing at the work that nearly no one is willing to do, and celebrate the everyday hero. Once again, Root and the rest of the suits proved prescient: "Mike Rowe is not afraid to be the ultimate guinea pig. It's his gumption and sincerity that really give us a deeper appreciation for the meaning of hard work … and he brings just the right sense of humor to make us laugh even when he's covered in an unspeakable mess."

Big score number two. Survivorman and Man vs. Wild came soon after and built on the cult following its predecessors had drummed up, and both recently started season two. The shows all garner big numbers: Deadliest Catch nets 3 million viewers alone; Dirty Jobs and Man vs. Wild follow suit with about 2 million apiece; Survivorman more than holds on with 1 million. Deadliest Catch has proved so popular it's already spawned a spin-off called Lobster Wars, with channel execs banking on the credibility of a show that chases yet another crimson crustacean across the high seas.

The real test will be sustainability—man versus attention span, if you will. Can these hits muscle through season after season and still hold edge-of-the-seat allure? If Shark Week, the longest-running event in cable history, is any indication, these shows may just have the two legs to do it.