Brooks Barnes and Amy Chozick at The New York Times write about the latest media company to invest $$$ in education technology. This time it’s the cable TV company Discovery - known for the Discovery channel. Discovery joins Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., The Washington Post Co., Pearson, NBC Universal, Walt Disney & Co., McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in growing field of media companies that are investing in digital education products.

Discovery’s betting on selling Techbooks that combine video, labs and other content in an effort to replace textbooks. The Techbooks cost between $38 and $55 for a six-year subscription compared to $70 for traditional textbooks. Already, the company sells educational video services to school districts. Barnes and Chozick write about the other business motivations for Discovery:

Conventional textbooks for kindergarten through 12th grade are a $3 billion business in the United States, according to the Association of American Publishers, with an additional $4 billion spent on teacher guides, testing resources and reference materials. And almost all that printed material, educators say, will eventually be replaced by digital versions.

“It’s kind of perfect for us,” said David M. Zaslav, chief executive of Discovery Communications, which owns networks like Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and TLC. “Educational content is core to our DNA, and we’re unencumbered — unlike traditional textbook publishers, we’re not defending a dying business.”

Mr. Zaslav is not the only media executive talking grandly about education these days. Movies, television, newspapers and magazines are in decline or facing headwinds, putting pressure on media companies to find new areas of expansion.

Education is emerging as an answer, largely because executives see a way to capitalize on the changes that technology is bringing to classrooms — turnabout as fair play, given the way that the Web has upended major media’s own business models.

Via The New York Times