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Being Allowed to Fail May be Behind the Success of Animal Planet

Jan 18, 2010  •  Post A Comment

We continue our series of interviews with the top executives of Discovery Communicaions, TVWeek’s "Cable TV Programmer of the Decade."

Today we speak with Marjorie Kaplan, who’s been with Discovery for 13 years, the last three overseeing a major transformation at Animal Planet.

Under Kaplan’s leadership Animal Planet is not the same channel it was for its first ten years. Then, the channel was watched by grandparents and their grandchildren. But the Animal Planet of today is not your grandparents AP.

A perfect example: Here’s Animal Planet’s description of a new show that just debuted on the channel last night, Jan. 16th:

Pit Boss.jpg

"Pit Boss," premiering Sunday Jan. 16 at 10 p.m. Shorty Rossi, a former actor who’s now an entertainment guru and devoted pit bull rescuer, has recruited three pals to help him with the often difficult task of rehabilitating pit bulls. This breed, as we know too well, has long suffered from a bad reputation, and when the dogs have been mistreated or neglected, their road to recovery–and trust in humans–is a rough one. Shorty, who heads Shortywood Productions, a talent management company for little people, asked his friends/employees Ashley, Ronald and Sebastian to work with the dogs. And as the cameras will show, the dogs’ size is just one more challenge for Shorty and company, all of whom are little people.

An engaging mix of documentary and soap opera, with a healthy dose of show biz, "Pit Boss" brings you six episodes of a unique dog-and-human partnership.

Please click here to read our entertaining and informative interview with Marjorie Kaplan, President and General Manager, Animal Planet Media Entertpises.

5 Comments

  1. Whats up shorty,I love what ur doing I have 3 pitts myself and love them ,I think pitts are the best breed but when they get in the wrong hands they can be deadly i hate it when kids get pitts just to fight or breed to make money it not rite but its never going to end. Keep up the good fight brother I,ll be watching your show .

  2. Can I quote you in my report for school?

  3. hey i love shorty!

  4. Wow, amazing blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy.

  5. I love the way you write and also the theme on your blog. Did you code this yourself or was it done by a professional? I’m very very impressed.

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