Discovery bulks up with Knowledge TV

Cabler to up subscriber base to 50 mil

By JOHN DEMPSEY

NEW YORK -- Discovery Communications has added another cable network to its bulging portfolio, Knowledge TV, which reaches about 20 million subscribers.

The seller is the Jones Education Co., headed by Glenn Jones, who sold his 1.5-million-subscriber cable operation last year to Comcast. Sources said Jones decided that it would be too expensive to buy the cable system clearances necessary to double Knowledge TV's subscriber base.

Discovery has the bankroll to pay big bucks to cable operators to drive the circulation of Knowledge TV. At the going rate of $7 a subscriber, Discovery would have to be prepared to pay operators as much as $210 million to move the subscriber count to 50 million.

While declining to talk about financial blueprints, Bill Goodwyn, senior VP of affiliate sales and marketing for Discovery Communications, said, "Any cable network with less than 30 million subscribers has to develop a strategy to get to 50 million or it could go out of business."

As example, Goodwyn cited Court TV, which has added theatrical and TV movies and high-profile series like "Homicide" to boost the ratings and visibility of the network.

Knowledge TV brings in only about $8.8 million a year in subscriber fees from cable operators, according to Paul Kagan Associates, putting it close to the bottom of the pile among cable networks. (The most lucrative, ESPN, racks up about $600 million a year in subscriber fees.)

In advertising revenues, Knowledge is among the lowest, bringing in about $3.2 million in 1998.

Knowledge TV's programming lineup consists of series such as "On the Money" (a daily news show on economics), "New Media News," "RxTV," "Home Computing," "Living Right" and "Alternative Medicine."

Goodwyn said the network fits with Discovery's lineup of information-rich networks such as Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel, Animal Planet and Travel Channel.