Discovery Channel was founded in 1985 in the U.S. as an educational channel with just $5 million. It was a small amount of capital because few people thought it would be a profitable venture. There were serious doubts about the viability and likeability of its content. The general view held that people were not interested in educational subjects. It was thought that the content of television was limited to entertainment and news.
Most important still from the perspective of its effect on learning, is that it has had a huge impact on the education of millions of people throughout the world because young and adults watch it with interest and when people are tuned into something, the brain retains more information.
Another important aspect is that it is education for free for the share of the population with the lowest incomes, which is unable to undertake expensive studies. In least developed countries it even allows the illiterate to acquire precise scientific information without requiring a base knowledge.
Over the years the content of Discovery has indeed proven less entertaining that sport, movies, sitcoms and other purely entertainment programs, but it has nonetheless caught the attention of millions of people worldwide and it has taught them a large amount of factual and scientific data.
Another proof of the success of Discovery is that it originally started delivering a variety of educational subjects through a single channel but since the audience was so large, over time it created several channels that provide different and more specific scientific subjects through each one of them.
History Channel was founded in 1995 in the U.S., trying to emulate the success of Discovery Channel. As the name suggests, its presentations recount past episodes from the history of the world and it has also proven to be a subject of much interest for millions of people in the U.S. and in many other countries. In a relatively small amount of time History Channel began to deliver high ratings and it has sustained them over time. Although educational, the interest of people in its content was so large, that it had to segment the market and create other channels that target specific aspects of history.
National Geographic Channel was founded in 1997 in further recognition to the success of education TV. Like Discovery Channel and History Channel, Nat Geo (as it is called) features documentaries with factual content involving nature, science, culture and history. By 2010 Nat Geo was available in 143 countries, it was seen in more than 160 million homes worldwide and it was shown in 25 languages.
We believe that we can reproduce such a success in Central America by presenting programming on sustainable development, but we are certain that we can achieve much more. We are confident that we can supersede in attractiveness normal entertainment programs. Due to our past successes, we believe that we can create educational programs, which will lure a bigger viewership than Hollywood movies, sitcoms and sport.
In Honduras and Central America countless towns and villages lack a high school, a middle school and even an elementary school. However, every single village has access to television and cable now reaches every corner of the region. An educational channel focusing on sustainable development is more effective in reaching every corner of Central America than traditional forms of education.
The quality and quantity of what is taught at a professional TV channel like the one we wish to create, is also exponentially superior to that of traditional forms of teaching. Practically all teachers at the elementary, secondary and university level in the Central American region have considerably inferior academic knowledge than their colleagues in North America, Western Europe and Japan. At Climate Change Channel we have academic standards that are way superior to those in the region and comparable to the one of universities in developed countries.
In Honduras in particular, but also in the rest of the region, strikes in public education institutions are endemic at the elementary, secondary and university level. Due to strikes and other shortcomings typical of developing countries, students received during the 2000—2010 years, less than three-fourths of the stipulated days of class. With an education channel that focuses on sustainable development, students would be able to receive data over such a subject all year round without any interruptions.
With the Climate Change Channel, students would get more and better education than the one they are getting right now in schools and universities.
