As Disney, Netflix and WarnerMedia try to boost new streaming-video hubs with glitzy movies and TV celebrities, rival Discovery plans a different hook: real life.
The company best known for cable networks like Discovery Channel, TLC, Food Network and HGTV centered on unscripted programming, unveiled a new “Discovery Plus” streaming hub Wednesday, offering the service at $4.99 per month with ads and $6.99 per month without. Discovery plans to team up with Verizon, the telecommunications provider that helped distribute Disney Plus, which will make the new service available for free to its customers, depending on their plan. The service will debut in January.
“We are seizing the global opportunity to be the world’s definitive product for unscripted storytelling, providing households and mobile consumers a distinct, clear and differentiated offering across valuable and enduring lifestyle, and real life verticals,” said David Zaslav, the company’s chairman and CEO, during prepared remarks. “We believe Discovery Plus is the perfect complement to every streaming portfolio.”
The company said the new streaming outlet would debut with more than 55,000 episodes of its various series, some of them tailored for individual markets around the world, with specific languages. A+E Networks’ Lifetime, A&E and History will also contribute non-fiction content to the service,, which will include popular natural-history offerings from the BBC. And Discovery Plus will feature early access to programming from Magnolia, the cable network and content hub being produced by home-arts celebrities Chip and Joanna Gaines under a pre-existing partnership with Discovery.
More to come…