A Curious Discovery

April 8, 2013
In 1984, Hendricks had $75,000 of debt on his wife’s American Express card and took all but $511 out of his family’s bank account to fund an audacious idea for a cable channel that features science and education programming. A blend of memoir, business guide, media history, and adventure, Hendrick’s story is proof that entrepreneurship is a socially approved form of gambling. Discovery Communications is now a near-ubiquitous media shark, with shows such as Mythbusters, Jon & Kate Plus 8, Planet Earth, and Trading Spaces. Hendricks built an empire out of his college fundraising experience, charm, and enviable prescience, in spite of his lack of real media experience. He boasts that he saw it all coming: DVR, Internet television, and e-books. Hendricks’s confidence and delusional optimism is absolutely contagious. It would be great if, as he claims, Discovery’s educational program is the key to solving a host of problems, from terrorism in the U.S. to poverty in Africa. Hendricks has proved his willingness to go “all in,” and maybe we all need a little bit of his kind of crazy to make our dreams reality. 8p b&w photo insert. Agent: Gail Ross, Ross Yoon Agency.

May 15, 2013
A memoir from Hendricks, the founder and chairman of Discovery Communications, the world's leading educational communications and TV company, which boasts more than 400 million subscribers living in 215 countries. The author tells how he built the basis for his present dreams to provide educational TV services to the 400 million households worldwide that lack electricity by working through the world's village schools. He describes how he had been drawn to the educational power of TV as a child growing up in Alabama in the 1950s. Moving into public service as one of the first lobbyists at the federal level for university programs and then the founder of a newsletter company servicing academic science programs, Hendricks recalls how he prepared for the opportunity that would present itself in September 1982, when he founded "Cable Educational Network," the predecessor to the Discovery Channel. The author had accumulated insight into the world of documentary films, cable TV and the broadcasting system, as well as the untapped potential of 25 percent of viewers whose interest in scientific and other factual content was going unaddressed, which Hendricks calls "the magic number that would one day create a multibillion-dollar industry." The author also shares his own view of the characteristics that shape a successful entrepreneur. For Hendricks, the key has always been curiosity, which he views as "the fuel of human progress," something that can be taught "to anyone, at any age, anywhere in the world." Recruiting the people and raising the finances to build the capacity called on still other qualities, which the author's narrative helps bring out. Hendricks also explores the economics of cable broadcasting and where the technology of global educational TV is headed. An interesting tale of how curiosity and entrepreneurship merged to transform TV and education.

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July 1, 2013
Hendricks is the founder and chairman of Discovery Communications, a global mass-media entertainment company consisting of 28 network brands including the flagship Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, and the Science Channel. Inspired by such classic television documentaries as Walter Cronkite's The Twentieth Century and Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Hendricks boldly set out to create an all-educational cable network to air documentary, nature, and science programming 24 hours a day. That was in 1982, when cable was still an unproven medium. How he went from a $100,000 second mortgage on his home and the brink of bankruptcy to a $23-billion media empire is one of the most engaging entrepreneurial stories you're likely to read and also one of the most personal. From his anecdotes about growing up in 1960s segregated Alabama to his recounting of a courting by the enigmatic Ted Turner, Hendricks' humility, sincerity, and prescience shine through. Along the way, you may even get a behind-the-scenes look at one of your favorite shows, such as Mythbusters, Shark Week, American Chopper, How It's Made, and Planet Earth.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)