• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, August 2, 2017

When you look at the programming content of the Discovery-owned networks and the Scripps channels, it is easy to find differences and nearly impossible to detect similarities.

What are the Discovery networks best known for? On Discovery Channel, “Naked and Afraid” (photo above left) and “Shark Week” come to mind. The network also has a bunch of male-skewing car shows too.

TLC is a grab-bag of oddities -- everything from “My 600-lb Life” and “My Big Fat Fabulous Life” to “Say Yes to the Dress” and “Long Island Medium.” There are also shows on TLC about dwarfs and Amish people -- not that there is anything wrong with that.

Discovery also encompasses OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network), Animal Planet, and basic cable's most lurid network, the crime channel known as ID (Investigation Discovery).

Meanwhile, Scripps Interactive has worked hard for more than 20 years to establish networks that, taken as a whole, represent TV’s happy place -- Travel Channel, Food Network and its companion The Cooking Channel, and most happily of all, HGTV.

This last network in particular occupies a niche all its own on television. It is a bonanza for aspiring personalities and brand marketers that could very well be unmatched anywhere.

For the lucky few who get shows on HGTV, the future always turns out brightly indeed. Just ask the Gaines’ of Waco, Texas -- stars of “Fixer Upper” (photo above right).

The environment for a host of brands that are integrated into the shows is unparalleled too. None of the product placements create any barriers to the enjoyable experience of watching the shows on HGTV either. It is a happy place indeed.

Soon, the company of obese people and crazed wedding-dress shoppers and TV's mecca of home-improvement and food preparation will become one colossus.

The official announcement came on Monday: Discovery Communications will buy Scripps Interactive in a cash-and-stock deal worth $14.6 billion, according to the companies' joint announcement (although various news stories assessed the deal at several different values).

In the news release, the companies claimed that their union would create a content company capable of capturing “20% of ad-supported pay-TV viewership in the U.S.”

They will evidently accomplish this based, at least in part, on the combined real estate they will control on most people's basic cable lineups. Scripps owns at least six major networks (and a handful of smaller ones), and Discovery owns (or manages) 11.

The release also emphasized the combined companies' reach with women. The new company “becomes home to five of the top female networks in ad-supported pay-TV with over 20% share of women watching primetime in the U.S.”

In many of the news stories out on Tuesday about this deal, the new company's ability to draw women audiences for advertisers was positioned as the deal's biggest benefit.

Thus, it doesn't really matter that the network of “Naked and Afraid” has nothing in common with the network of “Fixer Upper” and “House Hunters.” Women watch them both -- and also Scripps’ food channels and Discovery's ID and TLC.

The news release also stressed the combination’s “8,000 hours of original programming annually” and “over 7 billion monthly streams.” It also noted cost synergies valued at “approximately $350 million.”

This merger seems aimed at positioning the two companies to do two things: Shore up their current business in ad-supported linear television (while streamlining operations and reducing costs in the face of declining revenue in that business), and also give them greater combined heft for the development of new digital content and the platforms to distribute them.

In addition, Discovery, which is already a global media presence, is strategically positioned to help the Scripps networks establish their brands around the world as well.

What will change here in the U.S. for the average viewer who likes some of the combined companies' shows and networks, and not others? Hopefully there will be no significant change.

Despite their attraction to women, the crime shows on ID and the aspirational home-ownership shows on HGTV are spawned from completely different DNA. The hope here is that Discovery won't descend shark-like on the Scripps networks so many of us love and change everything.

The two companies are more than welcome to their combined reach among female viewers. Just please leave “House Hunters” alone.