Factual channels eye premium projects to fight digital disrupters

There has been a major shift in the international factual world over the last 12 months as the key broadcasters – A+E Networks, Discovery and National Geographic – have begun to move away from factual entertainment and reality formats towards big-budget, auteur-driven documentaries.

This was the key message to emerge from this year’s Realscreen event, which was rather appropriately moved to the Marriott Marquis, a much larger and grander hotel in downtown Washington DC than its previous home in the Hilton.

The broadcasters outlined their plans to commission “fewer, bigger, better” projects, to help them compete with the likes of Netflix and Amazon, which are moving into the non-scripted space, as well as new players such as Red Bull and GoPro.

Nat Geo’s newly promoted boss Courteney Monroe used her keynote session to explain the strategy and showcase forthcoming series including Nutopia’s One Strange Rock and Morgan Freeman-fronted The Story of God.

The plans were echoed by Discovery’s Marjorie Kaplan, who became president of content for the group’s international networks division last summer.

Kaplan said that she was also looking for “bigger” ideas but warned producers away from pitching generic shows. “Anything that’s expensive and shiny can look like an idea,” she added. “For us, premium is [asking] ‘What can we do that not everybody else is doing?’”

The former Animal Planet and TLC chief said that she wanted unscripted shows that shared the same first-person voices as scripted hits such as Jenji Kohan’s prison drama Orange Is The New Black and Vince Gilligan’s meth thriller Breaking Bad.

Meanwhile, Jana Bennett, who took charge of History at the end of last year, said that she intended to order more high-end documentaries, with a renewed focus on history, as part of plans to add more “premium hours to the mix”.

She is keen for more historical “look backs” and was working on programming to tie into the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the US and the forthcoming US presidential election.

However, the broadcaster will continue to air successful fact-ent formats such as Pawn Stars.

Factual entertainment focus

Despite the focus on premium during the four-day event, there was still plenty of business being done in the factual entertainment space.

Lifetime was looking for shows with “amazing, crazy people” and “exceptional kids”. The hunt comes ahead of a channel rebrand later the spring which is loosely inspired by Zooey Deschanel’s lifestyle website, Hello Giggles.

TLC was also hunting “riskier” bets. President and general manager Nancy Daniels encouraged producers to develop more ideas for individual broadcasters rather than taking shows through the beauty parade pitching process at a later stage of development.

Rob Sharenow, general manager of A&E and Lifetime, caused controversy at the event two years ago after claiming that the US non-scripted business was in a “creative crisis” fuelled by a conveyor belt of shows about auctioneers and hairy rednecks.

However his concerns seem to have been taken into consideration – with a number of shows in new genres breaking through.

Home renovation series Fixer Upper, produced by ITV-owned High Noon Entertainment, has been a big hit on HGTV, while Hollywood Medium, featuring teen medium Tyler Henry, has scored impressive ratings for E!.

A number of producers hailed NBC’s forthcoming child talent variety format Little Big Shots, created and co-produced by Ellen DeGeneres and Steve Harvey, as proof that the major networks were also starting to become braver.

British opportunity

This could be good news for British indies. Michael Kagan, head of international TV at agency ICM, said that Fox’s remake of Tuesday’s Child’s You’re Back In The Room highlighted that the broadcast networks were willing to take “big swings” by picking up UK formats.

However Gary Carter, former co-chief executive of international operations at super-indie Endemol Shine, argued that the “bigger is better” mantra may not be the case for producers.

Carter, who is now a non-exec director at Finnish content agency Klok, used his presentation – Disruption as a Catalyst: How To Ride The Waves of Change – to say that smaller, digital producers were likely to disrupt the non-scripted market. “It will take only one big enough hit to make it happen [for them]” he said.

Despite overall revenue growth, Carter claimed there had been an overall decline in profitability for super-indies, which were “heavily invested” in non-scripted entertainment. He said they faced an “innovation dilemma” as to whether they should be investing more in scripted as a result of its boom.

“The [unscripted] catalogues of the super-indies are surprisingly aged and in decline - the top earning formats for both Fremantle Media and Endemol Shine are more than a decade old,” he said. “There is no sign of another joining them, let alone taking their place. In fact, I think it is possible that there won’t be another.”