The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 22 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Hendricks: Up To 40% Of People Crave Science And History Programming
“I think, you know, there's 25 to 40% Of humanity that's deeply curious. They really want to know, where do we come from? You know, how, how is our future going to be shaped by our past? Where are we in the universe, for example? So it's that audience, which ha…”
Hendricks: Westinghouse's $1M Discovery debt-for-equity swap reached $65M
“Now, that one million dollars, I think, turned in later to be like, sixty-five million.”
Hendricks: Chronicle board killed $6M Discovery funding on closing day
“And we had really counted on that. And it was absolutely devastating when Leo let his bankers know the board did not, in the end, approve the investment.”
Hendricks: Ad-Driven Revenue Pushed Discovery Toward Sensational Reality TV
“When you have over, a little over half of your revenue is from advertising, it drives you to certain decisions”
Hendricks: Supreme Court struck down FCC cable network restrictions as unconstitutional
“The Supreme Court decided that the FCC restrictions that prevented the creation of cable networks were Was not constitutional, and the Supreme Court held that anybody who wanted to start a cable network was a First Amendment speaker”
Hendricks: Ted Turner viewed not creating a documentary network as a mistake
“And he always thought it was such a mistake of him because he did have the idea for a news network. He just didn't go that next step of, well, what about, you know, long form news and documentaries.”
Hendricks: Discovery Channel needed $1M monthly burn, $340K for satellite
“I mean, just doing the research, it was clear that I would have an expense rate of at least a million a month. Okay. And the big portion of that was the satellite transponder and uplink, which is, I recall was around 333 140,000 dollars a month.”
Hendricks: Building and launching commercial satellites cost about $250 million
“For them, it's about a two hundred fifty million dollar investment to build and launch a satellite.”
Hendricks: Launching Discovery Channel required minimum $25 million over two years
“But you're right, I knew we would need a minimum of twenty-five million, a little over, say, two years. Of operations.”
Hendricks: HBO's Early Business Model Split Subscriber Revenue 50/50 With Cable Operators
“One was a model which HBO had. And later Showtime adopted, which was selling direct to consumer, say for eight dollars a month, you could subscribe to HBO, and the revenue from that subscriber would be split. 50% to the cable operator, the distributor, and 50%…”
Hendricks: Discovery Offered Cable Operators Two Free Years Before Charging
“We'll be free for two years. But in the third year, you will agree to pay us a nickel if you have the freedom to do so through deregulation.”
Hendricks: Nielsen required 15M household distribution for ratings reports
“They said, well, that's the minimum number of households that Nielsen needs to actually issue a ratings report.”
Hendricks Licensed $250K BBC Documentaries For $1,000 Per Hour
“So a documentary that the BBC would have spent a 100,000 to 250,000 dollars on, I could really license for only a thousand dollars an hour.”
Hendricks: Discovery Channel's initial financing round was $2 million
“We closed on our very first Round of financing was two million dollars.”
Hendricks: Westinghouse gave Discovery Channel a free week on satellite transponder
“Westinghouse, anxious to lease a transponder for the satellite, yeah, the satellite transponder, said, John, you know, we'll donate, we will give you the use of the satellite for a week.”
Hendricks: Discovery Channel reached about 156,000 households on launch day
“Later, we learned about a 156,000 households were able to see the service. Yeah, had access on that very first day.”
John Malone Wired Discovery $500,000 To Prevent Immediate Bankruptcy
“I mean, they actually wired 500,000 dollars to our accounts at Discovery.”
Hendricks: Discovery equity diluted from 100% to 7%, then 4%
“There was that moment in time when I incorporated when I had a hundred percent equity, and then you get diluted down and diluted down, I think, After that, I think it was around, maybe around seven percent, and then you know, for the longest period, I was at f…”
Hendricks: Shark Week Is TV's Longest-Running Series Event
“I think it is the longest running television series event in, in television history right now. It's the longest one that's being maintained.”
Hendricks: CuriosityStream Collects Payment From 20 Million Global Households
“We now are collecting payment, you know, from twenty million households. And that's around the world. So we have been global from the start.”
Hendricks: Early 1970s Cable Was Legally Restricted to Retransmitting Broadcast Signals
“Cable was around, so this would have been probably around 1972 or 73, but cable was Really a community antenna. There are a lot of places in America that couldn't receive a good broadcast signal. Either they were down in the hollows or they were in urban areas…”
Hendricks: TCI, Not Comcast, Was The Largest 1980s Cable Operator
“So there's the big, at the time, Comcast was not the biggest cable operator. It was a company called TCI, Telecommunications Inc., and they had all of about four million subscribers, but it's clear they were going to be up to six and maybe even ten million sub…”