Building the long tail of TV drama

This week, Sky announced six new original dramas that it has in production, all of which are set to air in the next 18 months. 

Alongside the world class talent involved, the exciting thing for us is they are just the tip of the iceberg. They are six of the more than 100 dramas we have in production and development across Europe, alongside hundreds more in which we are in active discussion.

We want our own original productions to become even more of a reason people choose and stay with Sky.   Our customers have responded really positively to our increased investment and our reputation as a story teller has grown.

Fortitude and Stan Lee’s Lucky Man have been critically acclaimed and broke viewing records for Sky 1 and Sky Atlantic, while The Enfield Haunting and The Last Panthers secured BAFTA nominations.

This month’s new shows, The Tunnel: Sabotage and The Five, have had really strong starts and the opening episodes of both series are on course to be watched by well over one million viewers.

These shows have been successful not only because of the great writing and acting but because of the growing ways we make them available to customers to enjoy whenever and wherever they want.

How people watch TV is continuing to change and quicker than the tools used by the industry to measure consumption can currently keep up with. Sky is running hard to stay ahead of our customers in terms of both the content and technology we offer.

What we have seen is that the more flexibility you give people in terms of how and when they can watch a show – live, on demand and on the go - the bigger the audience we can build over time.

Since we launched Sky Atlantic five years ago, it has evolved from a live channel to one in which half of all viewing is now on demand; for some shows it’s as much as 80%.  An episode of a new drama can typically expect its audience to at least treble in the first week after it premieres and then continue to grow in the months that follow as customers watch recordings or see it on-demand as part of a box-set.

Rather than worry about overnight audiences, we can take on challenging projects that offer customers something truly different and ambitious.

A great example would be The Last Panthers (pictured). To ensure viewers got the most authentic experience, lots of scenes were in Serbian with English subtitles. What we found was that viewing really spiked at Christmas – six or so weeks after it originally aired – as customers used their time off to watch episodes.  They recognised it was something they needed to concentrate on to enjoy.

We think carefully about how we curate shows for customers. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Game of Thrones will always work best as a once a week show in line with the US schedule as it’s part of a global conversation. For The Tunnel: Sabotage, a show with a real hook, as well as airing it live each week, we made all episodes available as a box set so customers could watch them all at once if they wanted to.  

We have lots more exciting projects in the pipeline and the next few years promise to be biggest ever for Sky’s own shows.

Gary Davey is Sky’s managing director of content