Three years ago, I wrote here: “Discovery must be in play after AT&T’s recent takeover of Time Warner with its Warner Bros, HBO and Turner programming assets.” (Discovery for Sale, June 20, 2018) ATT confirmed today that it will spin off its renamed WarnerMedia unit into Discovery Inc. My Initial Takeaways: 1.Discovery Transformed A leading …
Update: Mandy Chang is leaving her post as legendary BBC-STORYVILLE‘s commissioning editor. Last year she recapped her STORYVILLE strategy in detail for my panel at Taiwan’s virtual CCDF-CNEX Documentary Conference. Our fellow expert panelists were: Hong Kong-based, Phoenix TV exec Haibo Huang And from Washington DC, all-knowing veteran programmer and senior consultant Dan Salerno. Read on …
BIG vs SMALL stood out at Sunny Side of the Doc 2019 as a pitch to watch. Last Friday, PBS‘s primetime NEWSHOUR dedicated a report to Director / Producer Minna Dufton‘s gripping feature documentary of Giant Wave surfer Joana Andrade. Below is the link to Stephanie Sy’s video report, and the transcript follows in case …
A Sundance Film Festival award lags only behind an Oscar nomination as a measure of success for documentarians. But what are the odds that a U.S. or international documentary will earn a slot on the Sundance program? And what is the total expense on all those submissions that missed out? This year, the Sundance Film Festival screened 73 feature-length …
BIG vs SMALL tells the inspirational story of Joana Andrade, the first Portuguese woman to surf the giant, bone-crushing waves of Nazaré. Finnish director and producer Minna Dufton’s debut feature documentary was released in late 2020, and so far has enjoyed premieres at nine top global festivals including DOC NYC and PÖFF. BIG vs SMALL …
BBC director general Tim Davie yesterday mounted a spirited defense of the pubcaster’s value to British audiences versus the streamers led by Netflix. His presentation and white paper BBC Value for Audiences gained wide coverage in the business media, where the initial focus was on $556 million in proposed cuts. Cut Documentaries Davie later spoke …
The Academy announced the eligible candidates for Oscar consideration in the Documentary Feature category for 2021. APOCALYPSE ’45 is one of the candidates. Don’t miss our detailed Case Study of how producer / director Erik Nelson developed and completed his gripping archive-based project for Discovery. Case Study APOCALYPSE ’45: Discovery’s powerful WW2 documentary in virtual …
Nielsen released their Top 10 Streamed Programs for 2020 (U.S.) in three categories: Originals, Acquisitions and Movies. Their key metric is Minutes-Streamed-per-Show. In the Originals category, the Top 10 is led by OZARK with 30.5 billion views in 2020. TIGER KING is #4 with 15.6 billion views. When I looked deeper into the data, I …