Profile... Larger-than-life Keaveny drives Discovery Asia

“Have you seen Fight Quest? What? You have to see it!” Tom Keaveny is incredulous at the thought that somebody might not have watched a programme on Discovery Networks. After 10 years at the company, he has certainly not lost any of his passion for the US brand.

The Briton’s larger-than-life character and jovial nature certainly leaves an impression - almost every sentence he utters ends in an exclamation mark. Relentlessly enthusiastic about Discovery, he is rarely short of a superlative to describe its programming. Indeed, much of his conversation consists of ‘elevator pitches’ for shows on the network.

The 40-year-old, originally from Birmingham, has spent nearly two decades in the TV business, building experience both on the sales and distribution sides of the business. He learned the ropes at UK terrestrial stations ITV and Channel 4, then at Eurosport. He first worked in Asia between June 2001 and May 2003, when he headed up Discovery’s sales and revenues in the region, before relocating to Miami to take on the same role for Latin America for two years.

Keaveny returned to Asia in June 2005 with much bigger shoes to fill. His current role includes overseeing all aspects of Discovery’s Singapore-based operations for Asia-Pacific, including a portfolio of seven non-fiction entertainment brands - Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Travel & Living, Discovery Home & Health, Discovery Turbo, Discovery Science and Discovery HD.

One of Keaveny’s ambitions has been to introduce more local flavour to the company, and he has moved toward a “decentralised structure” to grow the business. “I’ve been a very keen advocate of developing local offices and having local management teams to make specific decisions for each market. We have a very Asia-based management team - an Indian guy running India, an Australian girl running Australia,” he says.

“We’re in a specific area, factual entertainment, so we need local people to know what’s going on and what resonates in all of our markets locally. This is something I’ve wanted and envisaged when I took over.”

Discovery’s operations are further organised into sub-regions including Southeast Asia, Australasia, Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) and North Asia (Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea). The sheer scale of China and Japan mean they are treated as their own markets in Discovery’s structure.

“We were seen as too Singapore-centric in the past as we’re based there. What these sub-regions did for us is to open up opportunities in new markets - huge markets such as Malaysia and Indonesia, for instance - that we had previously ignored,” says Keaveny. “Now we have all these hubs, and all the marketing, programming and scheduling decisions are made there.”

As a result, Discovery now has more than 500 hours of local productions on top of its US-produced content. What’s more, he says that content made in Asia is now being exported globally - in particular shows regarding China.

The strategy seems to be working. Ratings for Q1 this year have surpassed last year’s by 28 per cent across all markets. Its flagship brand, Discovery Channel, is now also the leading international channel in the region, reaching more than 83 million pay-TV viewers every month. Keaveny argues that the network “has good balance now in a geographical and revenue sense” and is not “entirely reliant on ad sales or distribution”.

This view is supported by sources in the pay-TV industry, who suggest that Discovery is now among the most profitable operators among the global and regional brands operating in Asia.

Not that he’s resting on his laurels. Keaveny wants to boost the advertising revenue his network receives – though he admits that pay-TV as a whole has been slow to make its case to the marketing community. “As an industry, it’s a challenge for us to communicate more effectively to advertisers.”

To that end he is looking at using his channel portfolio to offer greater targeting. “We have to come up with attractive propositions for different demographics, Science Channel is key for us, Turbo - a male lifestyle channel - is going to be key, and experimenting with a kids offer is an interesting thing for us as well.”

Despite the recession and the threat online poses to TV, Keaveny is optimistic about the outlook for the network. Consumers, he argues, are opting for “stay-cations” - a neologism Discovery has adopted to describe people preferring to stay home with TV and cable as a means of recreation to cut costs. Keaveny therefore has reasons to be optimistic.

“I believe there’s still an insatiable demand for high-quality TV,” he says. “If you produce good content, people will watch.”

Keaveny sees Japan, India, Australiasia and Taiwan as key growth areas. He wants a greater slice of the action in China too, once regulatory issues are out of the way. Given the nature of Discovery’s content, high-definition TV is an obvious part of its growth strategy, with Discovery HD launching recently in the Philippines. It also has a magazine that Keaveny says will increase its print run.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his love for marathon-running, Keaveny is focusing on some very distant goals. “The best thing about this region is that you have a whole range of economies, creeds and cultures so we’ve got a variety of markets going forward that are primed for enormous growth,” he says. “Where there’s a market with high population growth and good infrastructure, Vietnam and Indonesia for example, there’s an opportunity for us. There is still so much more to do. We’ve only just begun.”

Tom Keaveny’s CV
2005 Executive vice-president and managing director, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific
2003 Senior vice-president, revenue, Discovery Networks Latin America
2001 Senior vice-president, revenue, Discovery Networks Asia
1999 Vice-president, affiliate sales and marketing, Discovery Networks Europe
1995 Sales director, Eurosport
1993 Senior sales executive,  Channel 4 (UK)
1991 Sales executive, ITV (UK)