YouSaid · the spoken record

John Hendricks

lines on the record: 119
first: 2022-01-17
most recent: 2022-01-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, the satellite transponder. Said, John, you know, we'll donate, we will give you The use of the satellite for a week.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And so when cable operators would come to our booth, we would show them that. And they said, this looks interesting. And they would give me a verbal, but I knew I needed something more than a verbal. But Westinghouse, anxious to lease a transponder for...”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so 1984 there's this trade show in Anaheim, California, and you've got a booth there for Discovery Channel, but you didn't have any content yet that you could show people, but I guess at this show you had worked on like a sizzle reel.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And so we thought, you know, the first stage would be we could maybe within the first year, you know, the first six months raise $5 million, but show some success and then raise maybe another five or six million. But it was clear the fundraising couldn't be in one fell swoop of 25 million. That was just unrealistic. But everybody felt, you know, this is a gamble. And the earliest gamble was the riskiest gamble. We closed on our very first round of financing was $2 million. That was extremely, extremely risky.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was clear. I wasn't, and I knew it was going to have to be more equity sold than that because after consulting with Allen and Company, and they were really bright and we had kind of investors lined up where we could see maybe 2 million, which is like two months.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you got him, and this is something that's really amazing I read, which is every time you met with people, whether it was like potential advertisers or Walter Cronkite, you got him to write you a letter basically endorsing your idea, not even committing to it or anything, just saying, hey, I'm Walter Cronkite, this is a great idea. And you would show those letters to investors. Alright, so 1984, you are really trying to raise money. And I read at a certain point, you were offering as much as 40% of the business for $5 million.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it was clear it was him. And he couldn't have been nicer. And he said, you want to come up here? And I'll tell you the whole story about what I've done in nonfiction television. And I was on a train, I think, within the week and found myself meeting with Walter Crondite.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was funny because he called me Mr. Hendricks. He says, Mr. Hendrix, I'm just read your letter and I'm very intrigued. And it was like unbelievable to me. At first, I thought, wait a minute, there's some people who know that I'm trying to reach Walter Cronkey. You thought they were cool pulling your chain there. Yeah”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“America at that point exactly. So, you know, I guess my telephone skills were a little bit good by this time. I called. And the person who answered that phone, I'll never forget her, never forget her name, Blanche Lafitte. I just love that name. Well, she was his personal assistant. And I said, I would love to have an opportunity to talk to Mr. Cronkite about a cable channel devoted to documentaries. I think he might have an interest in it. And she said, well, write me a letter, no more than one page. And so I did. And then lo and behold, like maybe the end of the following week, the phone rang and my house early one morning, it was about 8.30. And there was that voice at the end of the line.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And one person pointed out, well, what makes this fellow Hendrix think that he can make documentaries work on television when CBS just canceled Walter Kron Kitez Universe series? Yeah.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But you have setback. You do have setbacks. There are several moments like that. And, you know, one of my heroes was Walter Cronkite. And when he stepped down from the anchors chair for CBS Evening News, it was kind of on a promise that CBS would invest in a series for him called Universe that he would air every Tuesday night. And lo and behold, right in the middle of my fundraising for Discovery Channel, CBS canceled Walter Kronk.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have to be so confident that you know more than the person who's telling you no. And so you have confidence in your research. You have confidence in all that background of conversations you've had with cable operators. Yeah. With content providers, and you just have to say, I am working on these conditions. And I know, but there's that ultimate confidence that I had that if I can just put this on satellite, people are going to respond favorably.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's an overused word, but it's called networking. But it's as simple as asking friends, right? And contacts. People who might know. And every entrepreneur, you have to have a tolerance for hearing not.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And because this is really before the time of venture capital, which really kind of exploded in the last 20 years, this is early 80s. How did you even get meetings? You were not a media mogul. How did you even get into the door? Because I think you went and met with Merrill Lynch and Yeah, there was a number of like.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Letters? Yes, and so you know, all of this is building throughout, you know, 83. And then by December of 84, it was clear I'd talk to enough investment bankers. I was getting close closer to one investment banker. And here were the conditions that they would invest. They said, John, if you can furnish this evidence that you can get distribution, if you furnish this evidence through a contingent contract that you can get content. And we can see that advertisers would be interested. Then we'll invest.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you have to do everything. I mean, everything has to be transparent. So it's contingent. So when you talk to the BBC, it's like, you know, this is my plan and it's contingent upon financing. And part of that financing is going to be contingent upon if I can get letters of intent to carry the service. From distributors”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But in some ways that year, right, because you're financing this through presumably your consulting work and really there wasn't much to finance, but you're kind of building. And I hope this doesn't sound disrespectful, John, because I'm absolutely just blown away by your audacity. You were kind of building a house of cards here, because on the one hand, you were going to the BBC and saying, hey, let's work on a $500,000 contract. You're going to Westinghouse or whoever the satellite company was, and you're saying, yeah, let's talk about this deal. Meantime, you didn't have any money to do these deals.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Distribution market for it. So here's this guy from America who's offering $500,000 to pay for each year. We pay that amount each year to license it. And so for them. Well, that's another two or three great documentaries we can do.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, actually, fairly affordable. So, a documentary that the BBC would have spent $100,000 to $250,000 on. I could really license for only $1,000 an hour. And so, and again, for them, it's just found money. Just because”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, by that time I had, you know, a kind of a preliminary contract in the development of the BBC, so I knew what a large body of 500 hours of content would cost.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so clearly, and not to be blunt about it, I guess I should be blunt, but at this point... You don't have a whole lot to work with, right? You don't have any advertisers You don't have a distributor. What about the content piece? Were you at least starting to reach out to producers and content providers to get some of their programming?”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, before we could reach 15 million homes, because that would have been the first time we could actually have meaningful advertising revenue.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pitching people and then the other building blocks of this we kind of covered several of them. But this other question about advertising. I kind of looked on PBS who's sponsoring Cosmos. And I remember making a call early on to General Motors and they were kind enough to say, well, that's handled by our agency. And so I got in touch with the agency, that agency, for General Motors. And so they said, this is an intriguing idea. But they said, John, for us to advertise in earnest, you know, you need distribution in at least 15 million households. And ask why. They said, well, that's the minimum number of households that Nielsen needs to actually issue a ratings report. So that was an initial threshold. So how long would I have to spend money at a million dollars a month?”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what I'm trying to understand here, John, this is a sort of early nineteen eighty three now, and this idea is now being in your head for about nine months. You still haven't raised a dime at this point.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By the end of that trip, I had Monday morning. That was on a Friday and on Monday morning I had picked the name Discovery. I had kind of started thinking about Discovery, but there was a number of prospects. I mean, I love the word explore, curiosity, wonder. This something brightened uplifting. I knew I didn't want to. go with something that the consumer didn't immediately understand. I felt like Nickelodeon, for example, it doesn't really, in a vacuum when it was first introduced, what is Nickelodeon? Now, later we all now know it's a children's channel. But I wanted to be fairly simple like cable news network. You knew exactly what that was when Ted started it. So, you know, the discovery channel, I felt people would understand what that is.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, at that point, it was just like I was trying to see if they might be a prospect to be part of a consortium or a group of investors. Turned out they weren't a good prospect, but they were very helpful. They had very bright marketing team that was set in on the meeting and said, you've got to decide what do you want to be? Do you want to be a premium service? Do you want to be a basic only service and just live on advertising? And you got to pick a name that's better than cable educational network and say, I know, I know, I know. So it was kind of a key moment on the plane ride on the way home. I remember just writing down names.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. All right, so you got huge challenges to overcome in this business model, and But you decide this is, I'm going to pursue this thing, and I need to raise money. And so when you went down to, I guess you were connected with these These folks from store communications in Fort Lauderdale, which was a At the time a fairly sizable cable operator, presumably you went down to them looking to see if they might give you some seed money to start this up And were you looking for $25 million at that point?”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's where we saw an opportunity that at some point we could get a nickel or a dime that the cable operator would pay when you can multiply a dime times four million homes a month. All of a sudden you have a decent revenue stream to help pay your...”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, 50% of the cable operator, the distributor, and 50% to the national source, like a content provider like HBO. The other was the route that Ted Turner went, which was building a channel that would get widely distributed. You could charge advertising. And then what Ted Turner and others like ESPN, who many times had to launch without charging the cable operator any fee, they all clung to the hope that at someday the cable operator could charge what the market would bear. They might increase their rates from $16 a month for cable service to $18, but they would add on two or three services.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And then in our industry, I mean, you mentioned that, you know, developing the business plan, which means the business model. And so in the early days of cable, it was quickly kind of determined there would be two business models. One was a model which HBO and later Showtime adopted, which was selling direct to consumer, say for $8 a month. You can subscribe to HBO. And the revenue from that subscriber would be split.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where Tiny railroad parts of railroad systems were owned by different people because they would lay down the track. Some of these tracks weren't compatible, right? They had like different gauge sizes. I mean, that's what cable was like in the early 80s. You just had these small little operators who paid to lay down the cable. It was their region, and they decided what was going to go on their channel. So you would basically... The challenge you had was you had to get onto channels. It's like having a product and trying to get into every convenience store in America. Exactly, but iced tea. And calling every convenience store in America to get on their shelves. I mean, that seems like an overwhelming challenge to overcome.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Literally lay down cable and they had to face a number of hurdles. You can imagine cities didn't want a second poll system, right? You know, because there were telephone poles. And so there was actually a pole attachment law where cable operators had the right to attach.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. So 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 4 million subscribers, but it was clear they were going to be up to six or maybe even 10 million subscribers. But this was a time, as you said, I mean, there were literally thousands of small cable systems sprinkled all across America. And their capital investment was fairly low. They had to get some invest in dishes. Each one pointed to a communication satellite that had 24 channels, you know, capture that image, put it into what they called their head-end center. And from there, they would boost the signal and get it out to the subscribers.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is important to explain because obviously not everyone knows about this, but before 1984, cable was highly regulated in what the providers could charge to subscribers. We should also mention that this was a time when they were like hundreds of cable distributors and operators, right? It wasn't like today where you've got mass consolidation and just a few big regional players or national players. It was like hundreds all over the country, right?”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First, you have to have the distribution infrastructure, which is the satellites. And I talked to Westinghouse, and I saw, okay, that's a solvable problem with money. Right. Okay, so the money is the problem. Then you say, Well, even if you have the greatest idea, you think, and you can put it on satellite, will cable operators actually carry it? And so that's when I would make phone calls, I would call cable operators. And they were all supportive, but then they would always be a challenge. It would be something like, John, we love this idea, but we don't have any money to pay for it. regulated and so maybe someday and they were all kind of pinning their hopes on the cable act of 1984 and they felt like if that passed then perhaps it would unlock a nickel or a dime per month per subscriber and that would be an important revenue stream”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there's always times you have doubts, and there's some moments and times when you get almost in a crisis mode about the financial underpinnings of whatever your venture is going to be. But I was just always grounded and had confidence if we could just get on satellite, people would respond favorably to it. And that was just my mission. What will it take? But you outlined, I mean, it was a puzzle. You know, it was a puzzle.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, you are, there are a lot of moving parts with this idea that you had. You had... Get on a satellite, which was going to be really expensive. You had to source content, which you knew, for example, that the content side was relatively easy because you'd worked in the university library as a student and you knew that there were all these documentaries just sitting on shelves gathering dust. So, you know, that's another challenge, but probably less challenging than the satellite. And then you have to have a revenue model. I mean, while you were building this business plan and talking about it with your wife, Was there ever a point where she was like, this just seems like it doesn't, it's so complicated to make this happen? Like, are we really sure we want to go into this?”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was leashed. Westing says, we'll hold this for you until you get your money ready. That way then I could talk to investors. And the very first question is, how are you going to do this? And I said, well, I have this satellite pathway. We know that it'll reach at least 22 million of the 26 million cable households. So I started to have these details, you know, of the business. But you're right. I knew we would need a minimum of 25 million, a little over, say, two years. Of operations.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, for them, it's about a $250 million investment to build and launch a satellite And so when I called Westinghouse, they were eager for me to be successful. So not only were they calling me everything. Figuring out the business plan. And so the more experts I talked to became a little more real because I knew there was a satellite transponder that I could lease.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was extremely intimidating. I mean, just doing the research, it was clear that I would have an expense rate of at least a million a month. And a big portion of that was the satellite transponder and uplink, which, as I recall, was around $330,000, $340,000 a month.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Occupying your nights and weekends, this kind of obsession. You are working on a business plan. You were in the early 30s, I think you were 30 or 31 at this point. In your business plan, from what I've read, you determine that in order to launch this cable channel, that right now you had called it, what was it called, like... But in order to launch it, you would need 25 million dollars, which I understand in television terms is nothing, but that sounded like a lot of money. I mean, you are not an independently wealthy person. You did not come from family wealthy. You had a decent consulting business. When you came up with that figure, I mean, weren't how were you not intimidated, overwhelmed by that prospect?”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There had been a number of polls on television, research, consumer research. And so I knew there was an appetite for it. There were the great experiences that we were all seeing with Carl Sagan and what he was doing on Cosmos. PBS had wonderful success with Kenneth Clark's series on civilization. I think there's 25 to 40 percent of humanity. That's deeply curious. They really want to know where do we come from? 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 had been largely neglected by what a lot of people had called lowest common denominator programming on the commercial networks. And so there was a wealth of programming in comedy and entertainment because that appealed to 60, 70, 80 percent of the people, but not a lot of content for the 40%.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Presumably, you knew that there was all this content out there that maybe you could capture. But, I mean, as you were doing the research and building a business plan, what did you find out about documentaries in general? How did you know there was a market for them?”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which was where I was living. Talk to him about it. And he liked it. He thought that was a great idea. He said, you know what, let me help. Let me set you up with a meeting with the parent corporation of the cable system. And he set me up with a meeting. And everybody was encouraging. So I think people who are successful in business, they're kind of naturally curious people. And so I think when I saw anybody I talked to, if they could see themselves using the service, then I could get to a yes.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I mean, in that particular timeframe, it was mainly researching and reading. Just like, how do you create a You know, okay, I knew the basics. You have to uplink a signal to satellite. There's 24 transponders on a communication satellite, each one processing six megahertz of spectrum. Each corresponds to a channel. So you can have 24 channels up on a satellite. And so I thought if you're going to be successful, I wanted to find out where is CNN, where is HBL? I want to be on the same satellite. How much would that cost? But there was a time that a little later on that I was really going to people in the industry. I started with Winfield Kelly, who was the general manager of the cable system there in Prince George's County, Maryland.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was actually a company. I incorporated what I didn't know exactly what the brand name was going to be, but so I called it cable educational network income.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was a good question. It was, you know, Ted was focused on what he was doing because he loves documentaries. You know, since, you know, being in the business got to know Ted quite well. 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. And I'm glad he didn't. So the origination of that idea specifically now about a channel was around February of 82 and by that September I had incorporated.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The very first person was my wife Maureen. So she, like me, we loved great documentaries. And I said, what if there was a channel that was dedicated to great documentaries? And she said, well, that's a great idea. And then she kind of paused and she said, well, this is such a great idea. Why didn't Ted turn her think about it? Yeah.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Researching in earnest. Could this be on public television? And then by that time there was enough cable channels that had started, by that time there was a cable news network, you know, there was a sports network, ESPN that started in 79. And there were plans for music television, MTV. And so that's the development was. Why isn't there a cable? First, I was thinking, why isn't there an educational channel? This could easily play on. And then there wasn't one. And then you start spiraling into this. There's not one. Why is there not one? How could you start one? And then that started the process.”
2022-01-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discovery Channel and Curiosity Stream: John Hendricks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT