• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 5, 2007

Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav said Tuesday that an early goal when he took the job a year ago was invigorating, or even reinventing, the company's cadre of six channels with mid-level distribution. Those networks, he said, each reach an impressive 50 million homes give or take, "but they don't have connection to people in America."

First up was Discovery Home, which will become Planet Green next year, looking to serve as an advocacy channel in the environmental movement. Then, last week, came word that Discovery Times will take on the moniker Investigation Discovery and a focus on true-crime topics. Yesterday, Zaslav said the Science Channel would keep the same name, but would undergo a programming overhaul and "more contemporary" re-branding in the next several months.

Zaslav emphasized that Discovery has wind at its back in the channels' reach--"beachfront real estate," he called it--as many emerging networks fight tooth and nail to be in even 30 homes these days, if they can gain carriage at all in today's crowded environment. On a bullish note, he said the Planet Greens and others (the Military Channel among them) could each reach 70 million within the next couple of years.

"The question for us is what could we do with those channels to make them great ... each of those channels could be very big economic engines," he said at an investor conference.

Zaslav expressed ambitious goals for the revamped Science Channel, suggesting that it could build a niche audience and resonance greater than the History Channel. History is in about 40 million homes more, but he said the audience profile on Science is a step above.

"It's younger than History," he said. "The average age of History is 55 or 56; the average age of Science is 35 or 36."

While working to give individual channels a more defined brand and mission, Zaslav said the broader goal he is implementing at Discovery Communications is to build a non-fiction company "that satisfies curiosity."