reveries.com - artie scheff - the history channel

MARCH 2001

"I feel like I'm advertising God's work, " says Artie Scheff, chief marketing officer of The History Channel. "I feel like I'm doing my part to raise the intelligence levels of Americans."

Since the History Channel was launched in 1995, history classes in colleges are full, says Artie. "A lot of professors attribute it to our network and that's a really nice thing to hear." That the History Channel has grown to become a top ten basic cable network is another really nice thing Artie likes to hear.

It's not necessarily something he ever expected to hear, however. Initial projections were that The History Channel, which launched into a million homes, would reach just twenty million homes in its first five years. But within five years it was reaching sixty million homes and in six years it hit seventy million homes. By February of 2001, The History Channel was reaching seventy million homes and by mid-year, the total topped seventy-two million homes.

The story, explains Artie, is that The History Channel is the fastest growing cable network ever. So Artie is pretty much a guy who is making history with history.

Artie Scheff first arrived at The A&E Channel -- the older sibling of The History Channel -- in 1992. In addition to responsibilities for A&E's on-air promotions, he was put in charge of the design team that created the look and feel -- the brand -- of The History Channel. A year after its 1995 launch, Artie became its VP of marketing and last October its SVP of marketing, the channel's chief marketing officer.

Artie's own history, in his own words, is steeped in television:

"This is going to sound like a Ted Baxter repeat, but I started at a really teeny, tiny TV station in Fort Myers, Florida. At that time it was 128th market I think. I was there for a couple of years. It was WEVU, which I'm not sure is in existence anymore. It was an ABC affiliate. Then I went from there, after a couple of years, to Cincinnati to WCPO, which I think is still a CBS affiliate, and was head of on-air promotion.

I'm just so much in love with history. And, boy, the great materials I get to give to my kids' teachers.

"Then I went to WTVT in Tampa, Florida and was there for eight years as creative services director. When I was there I think it was the largest CBS affiliate in the country -- largest in terms of audience and largest in terms of geographic area. It covered most of western Florida. I had a very large marketing department there and a pretty good size budget for a local TV station." And then it was off to A&E in the Big Apple.

For Artie the move was a natural, because for Artie, history is personal.

His official bio says he was born on the Fourth of July, the grandson and great-grandson of immigrants who were Prohibition-era rum-runners who delivered their wares in baby carriages and funeral processions. "At least they were creative criminals," Artie offers. His real point, though is that they were a part of history and that "everybody has some sort of connection to history. Everyone can come up with a personal story from their family that has real interest."

Originally, Arties says he thought The History Channel was going to be a niche network for the history buff. A&E had a library full of documentaries -- mostly war documentaries. However, he and his team soon learned, through marketing research, that there was an appetite for a fully-themed history network.

What makes the History Channel so successful?

We've always done a different brand of programming that makes an emotional connection to history. The idea behind the network is not that we just give the names and the dates but we tell the stories. It just so happens that the stories are absolutely true. They're stories about people and stories about events, but they're on a more personal level.

We originally launched with the positioning line of, "All of History, All In One Place," which is basically a niche network. Then we changed it, a year after that to, "The History Channel: Where The Past Comes Alive." The message is that our brand of history is different from a PBS brand of history or a Discovery brand of history. The difference is that we tell stories and we bring history alive.

Some people still think of you as the war channel. Is that a problem for you?

We actually don't shy away from it. Conflict in human society in many ways defines history, and the war stories are some of the best stories. But we're quite a bit more than that. In fact, our most successful programming has little or nothing to do with war. We just had a huge hit with Founding Fathers, which of course involved the Revolutionary War, but it was all about the people who founded the country.

Founding Fathers was an innovative documentary because it really delved into the personal lives of these men who founded the country and explored them in a real personal way, what their lives were really like.

All of our advertising is people-focused, too. None of the advertising is war-focused. People know they can get war -- or conflict as we like to call it -- from us when they want it. So we never advertise it. We advertise those things that people might not think we are.

Will there come a day when mainstream television networks will also have to stop trying to be all things to all people and find a niche of some kind the way The History Channel has?

I don’t know if I could live with myself advertising South Park, as opposed to advertising Egypt Beyond the Pyramids. I know that what I’m advertising is good stuff.

There's always a place for mainstream television. They still get a large percentage of viewers. Right now in this marketplace, the mainstream networks -- even in cable -- get a large percentage of viewers. The only problem is that those viewers are always tuned into a program, not to a brand. So none of the major broadcast networks have loyalists, none of the major cable brands have loyalists. They have programs that people search out.

We have more people who have The History Channel on their "favorites" button on their cable box because they know what kind of program they can get from us 24 hours a day. They know they're going to get a certain brand of history. So you have more people who are watching us who don't know what programs they're watching, but who know they're watching The History Channel.

You won't find a base of viewers who just want to watch NBC, because NBC really doesn't stand for anything. That's the difference. The other difference is that by being a niche brand we also have limitations on what we can show. We can't do ER because it doesn't fit into our brand. And then there are certain types of programs that we do that networks can't do because they're too pigeonholed and too niched in their own ways. But, niche or no niche, to build a long-term, long-standing brand, the bottom line is you have to have good shows.

You have referred to the History Channel as a "populist network." What does that mean?

It means we're in the mainstream. We have become part of the mainstream of pop-culture. We're Tony Soprano's favorite channel. Letterman and Leno talk about us on a regular basis.

Your audience is mostly middle-aged men. Do you envision expanding that base?

Our base audience is sixty-nine percent male. Other than ESPN and ESPN2, which are obviously male-based (and they’re at seventy and seventy-one percent male), we are the next most "male" network. We actually like it that way, because for advertisers there are very few places where you can get a high concentration of men.

ESPN’s median age is forty-one, while ours is forty-eight. People think of us as much older than that and we're actually getting younger all the time. We've moved down a whole year from just last year to this year, which is amazing movement. So we're expanding by trying to get into a younger audience.

But still male?

Definitely male. First of all, a male demographic is highly desirable to an advertiser. Secondly, if you're going to expand your audience I always go for the lowest hanging fruit. If our audience is already male you could go younger, but you certainly couldn't go female and younger, because that's the unripened fruit at the top of the tree.

So then how are you reaching a younger male audience?

Well, for example, our "Modern Marvels" show skews decidedly younger than most of our other programs. Modern Marvels is all about invention, inspiration, technology and building. We advertise it in places that reach a younger male demographic: Sports Illustrated, ESPN. We're looking at other vehicles that reach a younger male audience as well. We're in a lot of sports venues -- we're all over Madison Square Garden, for example. We're all over the Yankees. We advertise in a lot of sports arenas because sports is part of our psychographic. If someone's liking sports, they're also liking us.

And they're also liking sex, apparently. You ran a show called The History of Sex. Why?

Because it's part of human history and -- I have to tell you -- not only did we get amazing ratings but it was also critically-acclaimed. We started with ancient Egyptian culture, and how they treated sex -- through Roman culture, through Medieval times, and all through the 20th Century. We also told, again, great stories. We did another program called Sex in the 20th Century, which is a four-hour exploration of the moralities and attitudes in the 20th Century, sexuality, and the sexual revolution. We've done Sex and the Civil War. This is all a part of history.

Teddy Roosevelt is a pretty big hero of mine because he really helped to shape the attitudes of Americans through the early part of the 20th Century.

What kinds of marketing programs have been the most effective for you?

We do tune-in programs like The Founding Fathers that are big, blow-out campaigns. Those have done really well for us to heighten awareness of the channel as a whole and bring a lot of people to the party for a sampling of unusual, high-end documentaries.

Our branding of the network as a whole, which is obviously a long-term process, has brought heavy awareness. One of the things that helped to explode the growth of this channel was the advent of the millennium, because peoples' interest in history rose with the turn of the century. The desire to look back rose -- on all levels -- through all demographics and through all age groups.

We did some very big specials. We called ourselves "The Official Network of Every Millennium" for a year, and we had a lot of full-branding marketing programs out there. It called a lot of attention to the network and it actually helped our ratings soar quite a bit in one year.
What are you doing that you consider truly innovative from a marketing standpoint?

We have a "time machine" as we call it, which launched last October. It is an interactive mobile museum that, again, tells great stories and offers little-known facts. It's both an in-depth and a trivia museum. There's a lot of very interesting information in it. You can even find out what happened on your birthday throughout time, which brings history down to a very personal level.

The exhibits rotate. Right know we have an Egypt exhibit in there. After the Egypt show is over with we'll put in an exhibit called American Classics, which is all about the icons that define America. The "time machine" travels with teacher guides -- historians -- to schools. By the end of this year we'll have been in fifty cities and over one hundred and fifty schools.

It's designed to invigorate the public about what history really can be -- which is more than just dates. It can be interactive, it can be fun; you can touch it and you can feel it. That really sums up everything that we want to do with the advertising and marketing of The History Channel. If you can touch and feel, you can experience history. It can be very personal.

You're also getting into interesting brand extensions.

We've just come out with a new line of puzzles. We are taking very popular historic photographs and making them into jigsaw puzzles. Here again, you can touch history by actually putting the puzzle together.

And you're launching a History Channel line of furniture. Where did that idea come from?

That came from our consumer products division. It's a huge idea for us. There are tons of things you can do with home furnishings -- even if we wanted to start with a small selection of home accessories that are historically based.

You're doing some travel tours, too. Are these brand extensions relatively more about creating a profit center or about building a History Channel brand?

It's a combination of both. We are making money certainly, but all those people on those tours now are die-hard fans of ours and they're doing exactly what the brand does on television. They're touching history, and they're doing it on a really personal level.

For example, you can take a Custer's tour, where you re-trace Custer's Last Stand. You visit where all the battles were fought and learn all about them from historians who travel with you. There is a Gettysburg area tour. These are six-day seven-night packages, so they're pretty extensive.

How do you see the History Channel evolving over the next few years?

Who would ever think that I could walk into work everyday and learn something new that was beyond my expertise in marketing? I find history fascinating.

We've just started to experiment with some new ideas. Last year we launched "This Week in History," which is the first historically-based magazine show. We also launched a quiz show, called History IQ.

We've tried segmented shows. By that I mean it's not an hour based on a single subject -- it's more thematic. For example, "Histories Lost and Found" features a few segments in an hour, all of which are about finding famous artifacts -- Marilyn Monroe's Seven Year Itch dress for instance. What's the history of that? Where did it go? How many were there?

Along with that we've done some auctioning with e-Bay, where we've auctioned off historical artifacts. We've auctioned Teddy Roosevelt's compass and Frank Sinatra's slippers. The first item we auctioned, but never sold, was a deck chair from the Titanic. It was very expensive. But, again, this is all about being able to touch history.

We're going to continue to look at things, different kinds of programs and different kinds of marketing opportunities that will stretch people's imaginations about The History Channel brand. We are constantly working to create programs and marketing opportunities and ideas that will stretch people's minds about what our brand is all about.