Pitch Perfect: An Inside Look at Discovery's Personalized Upfront
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Perhaps it’s a function of the way the river light splashes all over the room like bourbon poured from a great height, or maybe it’s just that this is the first day in which spring no longer seems like some kind of cruel rumor. Either way, the mood around Horizon Media’s Manhattan office is positively sunny.
It’s a little after five o’clock on Wednesday, April 1, and Horizon CEO Bill Koenigsberg and a retinue of around 80 employees are winding down around the terrace bar with a group of senior executives from Discovery Communications, who made the four-mile trip downtown to present a scaled-down version of the company’s annual upfront pitch. Whereas Discovery’s traditional dog-and-pony show would clock in at around two hours, this year’s “Honey, I Shrunk the Upfront” production was a much more succinct affair — 57 minutes and change.
As was the case with the discontinued Discovery upfront model, no one here is breaking away to talk deal points or hash out pricing on the back of a napkin. That’s not the point of the exercise. If anything, Discovery’s 11-agency barnstorming tour is simply meant to reaffirm longstanding partnerships while giving buyers an early look at some of the new shows on offer for the latter half of the year and beyond.
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