TV Real July 2025 by World Screen

TV Real Festival Recap

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’S TOM MCDONALD The second edition of the TV Real Festival kicked off with a keynote conversation with Tom McDonald, executive VP of global factual and unscripted content at National Geographic.

BRINGING UNIVERSUM TO THE WORLD Gernot Lercher, who heads up natural history at Austrian pubcaster ORF, and Marion Camus-Oberdorfer, director of acquisitions and distribution investment at ORF-Enterprise, discussed how they collaborate to bring high-end natural history to Austrian and international audiences via the UNIVERSUM brand.

MUCK

MEDIA’S MARIANA VAN ZELLER & CRISTINA

COSTANTINI

Mariana van Zeller and Cristina Costantini spoke at the TV Real Festival, offering insights into how Muck Media, founded by five friends, has assembled a portfolio of some of the buzziest factual shows on linear and streaming, including Trafficked on National Geographic, Karol G: Tomorrow Was Beautiful on Netflix and Sally on Hulu.

BOSSANOVA MEDIA’S PAUL HEANEY Paul Heaney, founder and CEO of BossaNova Media, discussed meeting the needs of buyers and maximizing returns to producers.

LION TELEVISION’S RICHARD BRADLEY Richard Bradley, co-founder and chief creative officer of All3Media-owned Lion Television, joined the TV Real Festival to discuss how the acclaimed outfit is navigating the opportunities and challenges in factual commissioning today.

FACTUAL INDEPENDENCE Exploring the unique positioning of boutique independents, TVF International’s Poppy McAlister and Albatross World Sales’ Anne Olzmann joined the TV Real Festival to share how their outfits are making sense of the factual distribution business.

CURIOSITY’S CLINT STINCHCOMB Clint Stinchcomb, the president and CEO of Curiosity, joined the TV Real Festival to share how the company is driving gains across its SVOD, FAST and content licensing operations and weighed in on the opportunities presented by AI.

11:11 MEDIA’S BRUCE ROBERTSON Founded by reality TV icon Paris Hilton and Bruce Gersh, 11:11 Media is taking a next-generation approach to scaling its content production efforts, which run the gamut from digital-first series to immersive docs and more, its chief storyteller, Bruce Robertson, told TV Real Festival delegates.

DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL’S TOM NEFF After first launching Documentary Channel as a cable network, Tom Neff is now resurrecting the brand as a streaming destination for indie docs, he told viewers of the TV Real Festival.

Ricardo Seguin Guise

Publisher

Mansha Daswani Editor-in-Chief

Jamie Stalcup Managing Editor

Kloudia Sakowski

Associate Editor

David Diehl

Production & Design Director

Simon Weaver Online Director

Dana Mattison Sales & Marketing Director

Genovick Acevedo Sales & Marketing Manager

Ute Schwemmer Bookkeeper

Ricardo Seguin Guise President

Website: www.tvreal.com

TOM MCDO National Geographic’s

The second edition of the TV Real Festival kicked off with a keynote conversation with Tom McDonald, executive VP of global factual and unscripted content at National Geographic.

NALD

We’ve taken a fewer, bigger, better approach over the last couple of years. Rather than try to maintain a certain number of hours, which feels like a linear mindset, we’re focusing on having a set of tentpoles that feel like they’re going to stand out on Disney+. We’re taking a streaming-first approach. We have the linear channels, but fundamentally I’m thinking about its forever home, which is Disney+, and about ideas that we think are going to pop on Disney+, where you’re next to Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar and those other incredible brands. We’re taking a less-is-more approach while maintaining big ambition. Fewer shows but higher impact.”

TO THE WORLD Bringing UNIVERSUM

Gernot Lercher, who heads up natural history at Austrian pubcaster ORF, and Marion Camus-Oberdorfer, director of acquisitions and distribution investment at ORF-Enterprise, discussed how they collaborate to bring high-end natural history to Austrian and international audiences via the UNIVERSUM brand.

Our clients in the international market know us well for having these high-end, blue-chip productions in nature and wildlife. This is what makes it easy for us as a distributor to invest. It is not as much of a risk as it would be in other documentary genres, because we are so very well-known, and this is thanks to Gernot and his team.”

—Marion Camus-Oberdorfer [Audiences] switch on on Tuesday nights, in prime time, and they expect high quality, both visually and in terms of content. UNIVERSUM in Austria stands for something. This is the pressure we have to bring programs in that slot that fulfill all the expectations our audiences have…. Everybody is suff ering from budget cuts. Especially in natural history, it feels like a family where one helps the other. This makes it easier in tougher times. No co-production means no documentary. Putting money together is the only way to get things done.” —Gernot Lercher

The only video portal for the factual programming industry.

MARIANA VAN ZELLER & CRISTINA COSTANTINI Muck Media’s

The production company exists so that we can make good stories... so that the five of us can make stories that we think are good and important. Oftentimes, they have some kind of civic underpinning, some issue or injustice that we’re trying to address. Some of our stories are very, very dark, and some are very light.”

—Cristina Costantini

We try to stay true to ourselves and the stories that we’re ultimately interested in doing. We didn’t come into this business to chase money. We are privileged to do the work that we do, and we hope that the work we’re doing has some sort of impact on the world. You can be really good at being a filmmaker, but if you don’t also know how to read a contract or sell the pitch or figure out creative ways of finding financing… there’s so much more that as a filmmaker you have to be good at or at least you have to learn.”

—Mariana van Zeller

PAUL HEAN BossaNova Media’s

Paul Heaney, founder and CEO of BossaNova Media, discussed meeting the needs of buyers and maximizing returns to producers.

EY

[Development Days] inform our whole greenlight process. We have to do what the buyers want us to do. They’ve got to sell projects up as well. We have to make sure that the projects we pitch are absolutely of the level. And when they give us their briefs, we have to make sure we’re not letting them down…. We don’t want to load our slate with too much of the same. You’ve got to carefully curate it and put it together with content that looks like it’s not just there to make up the numbers. Buyers are not buying like that anymore.”

RICHARD BR Lion Television’s

Richard Bradley, co-founder and chief creative officer of All3Mediaowned Lion Television, joined the TV Real Festival to discuss how the acclaimed outfit is navigating the opportunities and challenges in factual commissioning today.

RADLEY

One of the challenges is when the streamers and the broadcasters say they want true crime, they actually mean American crime, with a bit of U.K. crime. We are developing those stories, but the secret hope is that the big hits come from defeating the algorithm. If you look at the big drama hits of last year on Netflix, Baby Reindeer and Adolescence, they are not things the algorithm would have told you to commission. And yet they connected. We spend quite a lot of time in our development team thinking not just about true crime and celebrity, but what is the other thing that they’re not thinking about that we can persuade them might start a new trend and broaden the slate?”

INDEPENDENCE Factual

Exploring the unique positioning of boutique independents, TVF International’s Poppy McAlister and Albatross World Sales’ Anne Olzmann joined the TV Real Festival to share how their outfits are making sense of the factual distribution business.

We work a lot with producers in non-English-speaking territories, who are producing amazing documentaries. We are finding abilities with AI companies to help re-version, subtitle, dub and create closed captions. Hopefully, we’ll be able to bring more of these documentaries to the rest of the world.”

—Poppy McAlister

As an independent distributor, we have to stand out much more than we used to. The buying behavior is a bit unpredictable at the moment. There’s a shrinking volume of presales, so we need to be ready to invest a bit more than we used to.... You’re more flexible in adapting and reacting to market challenges. The boutique character allows us to remain nimble and to keep our catalog highly curated.”

—Anne Olzmann

CLINT STINC Curiosity’s

Clint Stinchcomb, the president and CEO of Curiosity, joined the TV Real Festival to share how the company is driving gains across its SVOD, FAST and content licensing operations and weighed in on the opportunities presented by AI.

CHCOMB

We try to be a performance-focused company. When we first started CuriosityStream, like a lot of companies at that time, our strategy was all gas, no brakes. Grow top-line revenue, grow subscribers. In 2023, we course corrected and said... we’re going to create a company that’s durable, has a diversity of revenue and is built for the long term. One of the most exciting things about the time that we’re living in is that there are more potential partners than ever. There have been transformational points in time, but I have never personally been this close to the range of transformational opportunities available to us.”

11:11 Media’s BRUCE ROBE

Founded by reality TV icon Paris Hilton and Bruce Gersh, 11:11 Media is taking a next-generation approach to scaling its content production efforts , which run the gamut from digital-first series to immersive docs and more, its chief storyteller, Bruce Robertson, told TV Real Festival delegates.

ERTSON

Paris [Hilton] has always had this innate understanding of pop culture. She’s been one step ahead in so many diff erent ways. 11:11 was about the embodiment of that. How can you take this foundation that she’s built, which is about being at the heart of pop culture, but also about connecting communities, commerce and content?... The challenge is, how do you cut through the clutter? We try to take advantage of the 11:11 flywheel that can get behind a product. Paris Hilton, when she puts her name to something, really puts her name to something.”

Documentary Channel’s TOM NEFF

After first launching Documentary Channel as a cable network, Tom Neff is now resurrecting the brand as a streaming destination for indie docs, he told viewers of the TV Real Festival.

We want to be a home to the independent documentary filmmaker. There is a crisis going on in the industry right now in terms of venues to show documentary films. The majors have more or less abandoned the documentary, unless they’re producing it themselves. That has left the independent documentary filmmaker in a difficult position. Our mission is really clear: we promote documentaries, we promote the documentary filmmaker an d we want to promote the industry.”