Discovery Wants to Make Men Feel
New boss Howard Lee aims to move viewers with mud racers and backyard gold diggers
Discovery Channel’s hit franchises, like “Gold Rush” and “Deadliest Catch,” feature plenty of blood and sweat. But where are the tears? That’s something Howard Lee immediately began asking, after taking control of the network at the end of 2022.
As head of TLC, Lee helped grow the network to new heights thanks to blockbuster franchises like “90 Day Fiancé,” where emotion was his bread and butter. But Lee felt that there just wasn’t enough of it on Discovery.
“I do think that men have a lot of emotions as well,” says Lee, who is now president of Discovery Networks (which includes Discovery, Animal Planet, Science and Travel channels) and TLC. “It is the one thing I do carry over from my DNA of TLC. I asked everybody if we were avoiding it. I think men have a lot of feelings. And men cry. I’m not trying to make a sob story, but it’s OK to show that side of them and to reveal what happens if they fail. That’s what we’ve been recalibrating this entire year, the storytelling.”
But that’s not the only emotion that Lee felt was missing from the Discovery recipe. In aiming to grow the network’s audience, he’s also looking for more humor. “It still has to be incredibly entertaining — and fun,” he says. “I don’t know if a lot of people smile or laugh from the shows I was watching on Discovery Channel. And that was another factor — it’s OK, we can really laugh and have fun with everything we’re looking at here. The world is made up of humor, too, as well as tears and emotion.”
Discovery is already the toprated network with men 18-49 and 25-54 (if news and sports aren’t included), buoyed by series like “Naked and Afraid,” “Deadliest
Catch,” “Gold Rush,” “Expedition Unknown” and its signature “Shark Week” and “Puppy Bowl” events. Now, Lee is about to launch eight new series — repping 50 new hours of original content — in the first half of 2024.
“The stuff that works the most on Discovery Channel are shows about people who are all so busy trying to succeed and make money,” Lee says. “Aren’t we all? It clicked for me. There are other ways where everybody’s trying to aspire, beyond just looking for gold or looking for fish. We discussed how many pockets of
America are uncovered, that people do not know.”
Among the freshman shows are “America’s Backyard Gold,” following ordinary people as they search for treasure buried behind their homes; “Big Little Brawlers,” centered on a little person wrestling league in Tennessee; clip show “Caught! Wild & Weird America”; found-footage show “Eye of the Storm,” chronicling natural disasters; and Sin City-set “Vegas Tow.”
And then there are two more series that Lee believes may join the ranks of Discovery’s staples: “Mud Wild,” about the extreme big-tire UTV mud racing circuit and its passionate, filthy characters, and “Hustlers Gamblers Crooks,” a thriller series about people who risk it all.
“Those are men and women who have all been trying to buck the system in order to make money, and maybe they’ve been caught,” Lee says. “But my God, it is so compelling how they went that route to try to make money. ‘Mud Wild,’ you’ve never seen so much mud in your life on a series.”
Lee concedes that launching so many new shows is ambitious, particularly in an age when cable outlets are struggling to stay relevant. But he’s in the trenches, watching every frame and casting every show. “If I’m not feeling anything — if I’m not laughing, if I’m not crying or if my jaw’s not dropping and gasping — I probably don’t have a good show,” he says. “Any time you commission new shows or keep tinkering on or refreshing old shows, everything’s always a gamble. But you can’t be risk adverse.”