World Congress: BBC3’s Nasfim Haque and Woodcut Media’s Kate Beal among industry figures discussing tactics for staying relevant

Nasfim Haque and Kate Beal

BBC’s Nasfim Haque and Woodcut’s Kate Beal were among the speakers

BBC3 is interrogating its viewers more rigorously to help it devise ‘distinctive and impactful’ shows, according to content head Nasfim Haque, as commissioners and producers discussed staying relevant in a shifting media landscape at World Congress of Science and Factual Producers (WCSFP).

Haque told delegates in Marrakesh the youth-skewing channel takes a holistic approach in how they measure the success of the shows and unearthing audience ‘subsets’ is also of value, besides huge overnights.

“There are other ways of measuring success. There are some shows where [we] need to look at the subset of who is watching that, where have they come from and what’s their background. That really matters to us,” she said.

“[Staying relevant] for us is about distinction, impact and the new talent pipeline. More and more, it’s about bringing in new voices, new tonalities and new editorial.”

Haque was sharing her views among a range of panellists who revealed the range of tactics they deployed to create engaging programming. Also speaking in the ’What’s Old is New Again, or How I Learned to Love the Classics’ session Jorge Franzini, vice-president of content at factual-focused SVoD Curiosity Stream, who said strong IP was the key for its decision to reboot of the 1978 BBC history series Connections with James Burke. 

“We’ve always played with the idea of using IP to attract folks who don’t like or engage with streaming platforms,” he said. 

To ensure the reboot would be fit for the modern viewer, the series was ordered alongside companion series Quick Connection, fronted by actor-turned-science communicator and podcast host Alie Ward.  

“We needed to introduce James Burke to a new generation, but we were wondering how we would do that so that it’s not just a marketing play. We decided to also have a companion series, fronted by Alie Ward, [to update it],” said Franzini. 

Quick Connection, which is exclusive to YouTube, is a standalone series and Franzini explained its purpose was not solely to drive viewers to the James Burke series as a “marketing piece”, but to drive Curiosity Stream’s viewership and monetisation on Google’s ad-supported platform.   

Franco-German broadcaster Arte also leans into online media platforms to appeal to broad audiences, with specialist factual and natural history unit head Hélène Ganichaud noting the outfit is very “digitally conscious”.

“We go where the competition is. We’ve got the linear channel, we have our own digital platform and also on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Twitch – we’re pretty much everywhere,” she said. 

“It’s not about rehashing content that we made for our digital platform but also making content especially for these places.”  

Ganichaud cited a live magazine show which is dedicated to science and airs on Arte’s platform on Twitch. Despite Arte’s recognition as an older-skewing brand, the show continues to be viewed by young audiences on the platform. 

“We have a classic old audience, so when we launched it on Twitch where the younger audience was, we hid the brand as we didn’t want to them to be aware that it was produced by us. Eventually, we revealed who we were but it continues to be watched by younger audiences.” 

Woodcut Media chief exec Kate Beal spoke about the importance of producers no longer just being “great programme makers” but also very entrepreneurial.  

“It’s about financing, finding opportunities and identifying the [different] customers as we’re not always looking for the traditional customer,” she said. 

Hence the launch of Woodcut’s distribution arm – Woodcut International – in 2020 which solidified the production company’s approach to “doing things differently as a producer”, and enabling her to approach channels all over the world and also serve as a financial resource.  

Last week Woodcut launched its first FAST channel in partnership with the Australian network Seven and distributor Keshet International. 

“We would love to go to a linear channel with a commission and have everything paid for but that’s not realistic now,” said Beal.