From a Baltimore childhood ripped from THE WIRE to the stage of the New Mexico Philharmonic, a musician shares his inspiring story in R.A.W. Tuba. Trailer: Concept The directors David Larson and Darren Durlac wanted to produce a film about Arts Education and how it’s under-appreciated and underfunded. When visiting the Baltimore School of …
Congrats to MY OCTOPUS TEACHER‘s extended family for winning the Best Documentary Feature award at last night’s Oscars. I write “family” because it took a deeply committed and close-knit group of friends and colleagues to bring Craig Foster‘s unexpected subject from chilly False Bay to Netflix, and then to Hollywood’s #1 stage: How It …
by Dan Salerno. Discovery continues to go “all in” with Discovery+. Announcements of new premieres are rolling out almost daily, with four more last week alone. One announcement, the upcoming Discovery+ special, Crikey! It’s a Baby! prompted us to check in with Animal Planet. Three months since the much publicized launch, what is coming, what is …
The Disney+ streaming service roared past the 100 million subscriber mark. That’s according to yesterday’s investors’ call. Disney+ is the home of the National Geographic “yellow border” brand and programming from Nat Geo Channel and Nat Geo Wild. Veteran programming executive Dan Salerno follows our recent exploration of the launch of discovery+ by reviewing Nat …
Discovery’s new streamer discovery+ released early subscriber data: 11 million have signed up in the few weeks after launch. I ask veteran programming exec Dan Salerno: What can we learn from the numbers? Is discovery+ ‘cannibalizing’ the channels’ program pipeline and ultimately revenues? Where are the documentaries that made the Discovery brand? Dan gives a …
Veteran programmer Dan Salerno checks in on the appearance, functionality and content selection of Discovery’s ‘month new’ streaming service, discovery+. Sample screenshots follow. Listen to Dan Salerno (15′) Peter Hamilton · Dan Salerno & disovery+ No surprise: d+ is heavily targeted towards female viewers who are attracted to the lifestyle brands TLC, HGTV, Food, ID …
Ellen Windemuth executive produced Craig Foster‘s beautiful film MY OCTOPUS TEACHER, a new Netflix release. (Now OSCAR-shortlisted, I’m republishing my popular September 2020 podcast with Ellen in response to the undiminished hit-level appeal of “OCTOPUS” to Netflix subscribers of all ages and territories.) She describes the years’ long journey of her friend, South African wildlife …
For last week’s World Congress of Science and Factual Producers I reached out to Ed Hersh, industry vet and consultant, to share his top takeaways. It’s always been one of the go-to gatherings of documentary producers, commissioning editors, and funding foundations, but this year it was online instead of in some exotic global city. We …