A Curious Discovery: An Entrepreneur's Story

by John S. Hendricks

It was obvious that Wright was still settling into his office in Rockefeller Center. He had arrived at NBC just weeks earlier. I gave Bob a briefing on Discovery, then Jack and I together outlined the investment offer. Bob listened politely and asked a few questions. Then he explained how a Discovery investment was just not a fit for NBC. Bob simply said, “We’re in the broadcasting business, not the cable business.” Even as I walked out of his office, I knew that Bob Wright’s business definition for NBC was wrong. NBC’s real business was “the television business,” or “the content business”—and instead, he was, perhaps unconsciously, making the perilous choice to tie NBC to a particular delivery technology in an abbreviated, shorthand definition of the business. It was an understandable abbreviation in 1986, one that Wright later corrected through his aggressive development of cable networks like CNBC and MSNBC. It was a powerful lesson for me: from that day in 1986 forward, I have always tried to think of Discovery as being in “the business of satisfying curiosity.” Our charter mission is to satisfy curiosity through all forms of media distribution technologies as they evolve through time.