John Hendricks, American businessman, founded Discovery Communications
John Samuel Hendricks (born March 29, 1952) is an American businessman and is the founder and former chairman of Discovery, Inc., a broadcasting and film production company which owns the Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet networks, among other ventures. On March 20, 2014, after 32 years at the helm, he made public his decision to retire as chairman of Discovery Communications after the annual shareholders' meeting of May 16, 2014. He moved on to found CuriosityStream, an ad-free, on-demand nonfiction streaming service.