Twelve documentary buyers and producers reveal what drives their decisions. Each commissioner is driven by a particular strategy, pipeline and budget ‘sweet spot’. Each producer describes a unique path from concept through funding and production to distribution. Since 2010, the mission of my Documentary Business newsletter has been to reveal how these individual production pathways …
How are the channels responding to the rise of Netflix and the streamers? They’re launching their own streamers like NBC and Peacock, providing their brand and content, like Nat Geo to Disney +, or maybe just getting caught in the headlights. Dan Salerno is deeply specialized in documentary and unscripted programming, and together we pull …
My valued colleague Dr John Morse shared his latest Annual Nielsen Household/Persons Update for September 2020. These widely used Nielsen universe numbers provide an important context for advertising targets, and thus for programming strategies. Nielsen updates all its universe national base counts once per year that go into effect each September. Total Universe This year …
Abramorama COO Karol Martesko-Fenster reveals how COVID forced a rapid turnaround in the theatrical distribution strategy for Discovery’s Apocalypse ’45. He describes the ‘virtual theatrical’ release for Oscar nominee Erik Nelson’s gripping archive-based documentary about the Pacific campaign that brought WW2 to an end. Karol shares his pre-COVID strategy and its radical switch into a …
Discovery Channel and distributor Abramorama teamed for a virtual theatrical and broadcast rollout of Apocalypse ‘45. This powerful documentary from Oscar-nominee Erik Nelson recounts the harrowing end of WW2, using unseen archive and the eyewitness accounts of 24 veterans who lived through the Pacific campaign. My Apocalypse ‘45 Case Study and podcasts capture the development, …
Here are the Top 25-rated British Wildlife and Pets/Lifestyle programs in 1H 2020. The nostalgic “Land & Country” theme that I described in my Top 100 UK Factual and Top 25 History posts is less prominent in the Natural History category. Viewers who love Wildlife enjoy being transported to remote locations that are mostly beyond …
REELZ commissions around 200 originals each year and acquires another 50+ programs. The focus is on: Celebrity, particularly from the world of entertainment, and Notoriety, in the True Crime genre. Unlike most platforms like Netflix or U.S. cable nets, REELZ acquires only U.S. rights, allowing producers to profitably exploit rest-of-world in a popular genre. I …
In this intense U.S. election year, I caught up with filmmaker Pat McGee to explore his fast-track production of “Bernie Blackout: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Broadcast on VICE network on May 13, 2020, McGee‘s investigative documentary asks: How did the news media affect Bernie Sanders‘ 2020 presidential campaign? Was his campaign sabotaged by corporate …