It was 1988 and cable was getting traction in Europe and especially in the United Kingdom. Nimrod, working for United Cable, was spearheading that American company’s move into Europe. He realized that the new cable systems would need differentiated programming to drive business—just as it had in the United States. European cable systems needed a movie channel, a sports channel, a news channel, and a documentary channel, among other specialized services. We had already proved in the States that viewers wanted a documentary channel. And we knew that if Discovery didn’t expand into Europe to fill
...more
