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TVREAL
WWW.TVREAL.WS
APRIL 2018
MIPDOC & MIPTV EDITION
Factual on OTT / True-Crime Docs / Discovery’s David Zaslav BBC NHU’s Julian Hector / Live PD’s Dan Cesareo
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CONTENTS
Making an Impact
FEATURES 16 OTT GETS REAL New players in digital—from global streamers to VR platforms—are impacting the documentary space.
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Aimlessly channel surfing on a quiet Friday night, I landed on A&E’s Live PD. I was instantly captivated—and immensely curious.
Ricardo Seguin Guise Publisher Anna Carugati Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Executive Editor Joanna Padovano Tong Managing Editor Sara Alessi Associate Editor Victor L. Cuevas Production & Design Director Phyllis Q. Busell Art Director Simon Weaver Online Director Dana Mattison Senior Sales & Marketing Manager Nathalia Lopez Sales & Marketing Coordinator Andrea Moreno Business Affairs Manager
Ricardo Seguin Guise President Anna Carugati Executive VP Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development TV Real © 2018 WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, #1207 New York, NY 10010 Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.tvreal.ws
I had so many questions! How did they manage the logistics of covering law enforcement officers, live, in so many locations? Against a backdrop of seemingly daily headlines of police overreach, I wondered about what impact the camera has on how law enforcement engages with civilians. And, perhaps the biggest realization: how did I not know how bad the drug epidemic is in middle America? Seemingly every incident I saw on Live PD had something to do with drugs: overdoses, out-of-control behavior, trafficking. And that is documentary filmmaking at its best, isn’t it, when it gives you new insight into something? Fortunately for me, I got to ask Dan Cesareo, whose company, Big Fish Entertainment, produces Live PD, a lot of questions about the hit show. You’ll find that interview in this issue of TV Real. We also explore the broad appeal of true-crime programming, which remains a must-have genre for broadcasters across the globe. Live PD wasn’t the only illuminating show I watched recently. Blue Planet II had me in awe of the wonders of the ocean and the new technology that is allowing us to see the underwater world in a way we haven’t seen it before. It also starkly showed the devastation that we’re wreaking on that habitat. We hear from Julian Hector, the head of the BBC’s Natural History Unit, which made Blue Planet II, about the importance of putting the natural world front and center in people’s homes—and in their thoughts. Of course, it’s not just the seas that are being impacted by mankind. High up on the endangered species list are tigers, with less than 4,000 left in the wild. David Zaslav has committed the resources of Discovery, Inc. to Project C.A.T., which is dedicated to doubling the population of tigers by 2022. He discusses that initiative and other aspects of Discovery’s business in this edition. The Ivory Game, meanwhile, from Terra Mater Factual Studios, aims to shine a light on the poaching of elephants. For Walter Köhler, Terra Mater’s CEO, the doc’s pickup by Netflix gave it the prominence and global reach that is needed for the film to have an impact on public sentiment and government policy. An article in this issue explores the ways in which OTT platforms are shaking up the factual business. —Mansha Daswani
20 MAKING A KILLING A perennially popular genre, crime docs are in a state of evolution.
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INTERVIEWS
24 Discovery’s David Zaslav
26 Live PD’s Dan Cesareo
28 BBC NHU’s Julian Hector
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Beyond Distribution Buyers Bootcamp / Grudge Race / Dr Keri: Prairie Vet Scott McGillivray takes real estate rookies under his wing and teaches them everything they need to know about how to renovate and turn a profit in Buyers Bootcamp. Beyond Distribution is also launching Grudge Race, in which street racers with rivalries have the chance to settle their feud in front of a live audience. Cash and other prizes are in store for the victor, but the loser must watch as parts of his or her beloved racing car are removed. Meanwhile, the joys and heartbreaks of being a traveling veterinarian are on display in Dr Keri: Prairie Vet. “These shows have all enjoyed fantastic ratings, and the themes of making a change in your life and others’ lives— whether it’s by investing in real estate, racing against a sworn enemy or providing valuable care to all kinds of animals—are universal,” says Munia Kanna-Konsek, Beyond’s head of sales.
“All of our key titles launching at MIPTV this year have something special to offer buyers.” —Munia Kanna-Konsek
FremantleMedia International Pope: The Most Powerful Man in History / 1968: The Year That Changed America / The Coronation The Coronation
From Glass Entertainment Group and Rearrange TV comes Pope: The Most Powerful Man in History, a CNN original that takes a behind-the-scenes look at the Vatican. “The premiere episode examines the origins of the papacy and how Catholicism, against all odds, spread throughout Europe,” says Katrina Neylon, the executive VP of global content at FremantleMedia International. The company is also highlighting 1968: The Year That Changed America, a docuseries from executive producers Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog. Then there is The Coronation, focused on the Crown Jewels and the ancient ceremony for which they are used. “To mark the 65th anniversary of Her Majesty The Queen’s Coronation, she shares memories of the ceremony, as well as that of her father, King George VI, in 1937,” says Neylon.
“Our MIPTV nonscripted slate is packed full of bold, impactful and ambitious event-viewing factual shows from our top-class in-house and numerous thirdparty producers.” —Katrina Neylon
Gusto Worldwide Media Flour Power / Bonacini ’s Italy / One World Kitchen The baking series Flour Power is set in a retro-style kitchen, where the host shows viewers how to make baked treats. The 4K series is accompanied by recipes, webisodes and food photography for buyers. In Bonacini’s Italy, celebrity chef Michael Bonacini prepares Italian fare, while One World Kitchen showcases international cuisines. Both of these offerings are also done in 4K and have additional web content available. “Flour Power celebrates baking in a retro fashion; Bonacini’s Italy is a modern, sophisticated take on classic Italian dishes loved around the world; and One World Kitchen celebrates nine different cuisines from nine points of the globe,” says Chris Knight, the president and CEO of Gusto Worldwide Media. He adds that the company is excited about taking the Gusto channel into new markets, “and we are actively seeking partners.”
Bonacini ’s Italy
“We have 200 hours of quality 4K content that we’d like to sell to you.”
—Chris Knight
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Kew Media Group Haunted Hospitals / Christiane Amanpour: Sex & Love Around the World / The Radical Story of Patty Hearst Paranormal activity within the walls of hospitals, nursing homes and morgues is the focus of Haunted Hospitals. Former patients return from the grave seeking revenge, medical professionals try to tend to their wards even after their deaths and spirits roam the hallways in the 13-episode series. “The fearsoaked stories are told firsthand by doctors, nurses and patients,” says Jonathan Ford, Kew Media Group’s executive VP of sales and distribution. The company’s slate also features the CNN original series The Radical Story of Patty Hearst and Christiane Amanpour: Sex & Love Around the World. “We are highly focused on working with our buyers to identify key trends and viewing patterns in their domestic territories; our diverse lineup of documentaries and nonfiction series is in direct response to our clients’ needs,” Ford says.
Christiane Amanpour: Sex & Love Around the World
“Authenticity, depth and integrity are important components in this competitive landscape.” —Jonathan Ford
Red Arrow Studios International Man’s First Friend / For the Love of Spock / Beat N Path
Man’s First Friend
The relationship between humans and dogs is explored in the new prime-time documentary event Man’s First Friend, featuring state-of-the-art visual effects, dramatic reconstructions and natural-history footage. The doc For the Love of Spock, another highlight from Red Arrow Studios International, tells the life story of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock and that of the late Leonard Nimoy, the actor who portrayed him for nearly 50 years. Hip-hop star Lupe Fiasco explores the art of kung fu in the three-part series Beat N Path. There is also the travel series Adventure or Luxury. “Factual is a priority for Red Arrow Studios International, and we continue to work with a range of talented in-house and third-party producers to deliver a growing slate of factual and factual-entertainment shows across all genres,” says the company’s president, Henrik Pabst.
“Red Arrow Studios International is committed to delivering standout programs to international broadcasters and platforms.” —Henrik Pabst
Rive Gauche Television Something’s Killing Me / Homicide’s Elite / Uncovering…
It’s a race against time to discover what or who is taking the life of a patient in Something’s Killing Me. The series delves into the investigations of life or death crimes and medical mysteries in which doctors, scientists and federal investigators act as medical sleuths. Rive Gauche Television (RGTV) is also presenting Homicide’s Elite. Detectives David Quinn and Vince Velazquez have worked hundreds of homicides together, and the series chronicles some of the most shocking cases. The doc strand Uncovering… includes Uncovering Melanie’s Murderer, Uncovering the Date Rape Killer and Uncovering Intimate Partner Abuse. Each installment focuses on turning points in criminal cases where justice hangs in the balance. “These titles are of the highest production quality with compelling and suspenseful stories,” says Jon Kramer, the company’s CEO.
Homicide’s Elite
“RGTV has created numerous brands over the years, and we’re hoping that the marketplace will continue to trust our taste in creating new brands.”
—Jon Kramer
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TCB Media Rights Vikings: The Lost Realm / A Killer ’s Mistake / Modern Royals Viewers gain insight into secret graves, death ships, missing castles and more in Vikings: The Lost Realm, presented by TCB Media Rights. The company is also highlighting A Killer’s Mistake, which “looks at recent murders and is very international in focus, with U.K., U.S. and Australian cases included,” says Mem Bakar, senior sales manager at TCB Media Rights. “It has unparalleled access to the killers themselves, along with some extremely skilled interviewers—pinpointing the errors that the killers have made, which in turn led to their arrest.” There is also Modern Royals. “We have commissioned this show at an exciting time for the British royal family; this show specifically looks at how William, Kate, Harry, Meghan and others have modernized and revolutionized the views, attitudes and perceptions of the British royal family,” Bakar adds.
Modern Royals
“Royals, Vikings and true crime as subjects are on the wish list of at least one broadcaster in most territories around the world.”
—Mem Bakar
Terra Mater Factual Studios
Sex, Lies and Butterflies
Sex, Lies and Butterflies / SuperPigs / Wild Korea The 4K documentary Sex, Lies and Butterflies follows moths, butterflies and caterpillars across the globe in different stages of development to see how they manage to survive in a world where nearly everything tries to eat them. Terra Mater Factual Studios is showcasing that title as well as SuperPigs and Wild Korea. SuperPigs exposes viewers to some of the nearly 2 billion pigs that inhabit the planet, from the Bahamas to Siberia. Wild Korea, meanwhile, is a two-part, 4K docuseries that takes viewers along to experience wildlife, natural beauty and everyday life in Korea. Sabine Holzer, the head of specialist factual at the company, says, “With these films, we travel all around the globe. Pigs in the Indonesian jungles? Diving deep into Korean waters? The most ingenious tricks of butterflies to avoid becoming prey? We’ve got it all.”
“We believe nature is something to marvel at, and this is portrayed in detail and with a lot of devotion in all our documentaries.” —Sabine Holzer
ZDF Enterprises
Africa River Wild
The Story of Europe / History of Weapons / Africa River Wild The history of a continent, starting from its first human settlers, is explored in The Story of Europe. ZDF Enterprises (ZDFE) is highlighting the six-part series in Cannes alongside History of Weapons, which focuses on the evolution of weapon technology throughout the years. “Some of the most renowned international experts in the world will explore the secrets of these weapons in a hands-on approach,” says Fred Burcksen, the president and CEO of ZDFE. “These experiments will illustrate how weapons have changed the tides of history and how they have shaped human destiny.” There is also Africa River Wild, which goes on a journey to the rivers of Africa. “Our goal is to provide a selection of unique highlights for the audiences of our clients,” adds Burcksen.
“We work with renowned producers and crews—some of the greatest talents of their generation.” —Fred Burcksen
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Mansha Daswani hears from production and distribution executives about how new players in digital—from global streamers to VR platforms—are impacting the documentary space. or the last five years, at least one of the Academy Award nominees for best documentary feature has been a Netflix original. This year, the global streamer finally took home the top prize with Icarus, a film about the Russian sports doping scandal. The Sundance Film Festival winner was scooped up by Netflix last year for a reported $5 million—the kind of figure that you don’t usually see for acquisitions in the factual space. Those high-profile festival purchases sit alongside buzzy series such as Making a Murderer and the upcoming blue-chip doc Our Planet on Netflix. Ditto at Amazon, which licensed the SVOD rights to I Am Not Your Negro and took a big swing with The Grand Tour. And those are just the general-entertainment platforms. Add to the mix services like CuriosityStream, which was founded by Discovery pioneer John Hendricks, and it’s clear that digital services are slowly beginning to transform the fortunes of companies operating in the documentary and factual space. “The earliest big successes for most of the OTT subscription services seem to have come through drama,” says Jamie Lynn, executive VP of EMEA distribution at FremantleMedia International. “They’ve been the godsend of serialized drama. We’ve all been very curious to see how they could expand beyond that. Many of them are still trying to figure out what is the best way to proceed in this area. I don’t think they’ve found the silver bullet yet. However, there’s been a big upswing in contemporary documentaries and series” on OTT services.
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FESTIVAL FORTUNES For Walter Köhler, the CEO of Terra Mater Factual Studios, “the big platforms have ignited a renaissance in feature docs. In recent years the results at the box office were minor, even if you made an Oscar-winning feature doc. For major feature docs like our The Ivory Game—where one of the reasons to produce the film was to have a strong political impact—online platforms are unrivaled. When The Ivory Game was released
by Netflix, an audience of nearly 120 million subscribers worldwide [could access it] at the same moment.” Köhler notes that OTT platforms are beginning to commission their own factual productions, but argues that producers need to be aware that it’s a “completely new kind of business. Producers’ habit [of saying,] ‘Give me the money and I’ll do something nice for you,’ won’t work with Netflix, Amazon and company. You have to risk a lot of money, but if your film is compelling, then your reward can be super big.” Ralf Rückauer, VP of unscripted at ZDF Enterprises, stresses that digital platforms “only create a handful of originals in the factual area, whereas each single ‘traditional’ broadcaster and the many pay networks have an annual program output that is a hundred times bigger. There are only a few rare opportunities for production companies” with OTT platforms, he says, which results in “a mixture of excitement and enthusiasm and a bit of frustration within the factual community.”
PLAYING THE SLOTS Rückauer adds, however, that program-makers, freed from the restrictions of traditional doc channel slots, can explore different forms of narrative on digital platforms. Moreover, he notes, “there is greater demand for serialized content that resonates with the audience’s binge-watching needs. For example, we recently co-produced Hitler’s Circle of Evil for Netflix with our independent British production company, World Media Rights. This is a perfect match to meet the needs of VOD partners and their audience.” FremantleMedia’s Lynn argues that topical shows can sometimes be more of a challenge on online platforms. “[David] Letterman’s new Netflix experiment was designed to be less topical, to have a shelf life,” says Lynn of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, a monthly talk show. “But is there a chance we may start to tune in close to live? Are [OTT platforms] going to be able to create must-see television in a nonlinear environment? It’s a different value offering. We’re all trying to figure out how that will work.”
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ZDF Enterprises’ Hitler’s Circle of Evil was co-produced with Netflix.
Terra Mater’s Köhler also references the issue of shelf life. “In linear TV you have a slot every week and you have to fill that slot with new things. After a week, the next thing goes live. But when it comes to nonlinear media, your content lives there all the time. So the platforms are far choosier. They need the differences and, especially in the big documentary genre, variation. If I have one tiger film, why do I need another?”
LEANING IN ZDFE.unscripted’s Rückauer is of the opinion that online platforms in the U.S. are more interested in “serialized and entertainment-driven formats,” while those in Europe prefer “specialist factual,” notably wildlife, science and history. “Generally speaking, I do not see much difference between pay networks and VOD platforms anymore—with maybe one exception. It looks like the VOD audience is much more ‘lean forward.’ People are starting to watch political, critically acclaimed documentaries or cultural, high-brow content. People care much more and want to educate themselves and are more curious and they’re watching more intellectual programs. At the same time, with platforms not having to meet a specific time length, this provides a big opportunity for feature-length, cinematographic, auteur-driven programs on mostly pay networks, which pubcasters hesitate a bit more to greenlight.” FremantleMedia International has done a broad range of deals with streaming platforms, covering everything from early seasons of Project Runway to Jamie Oliver programming, Grand Designs and the doc series The Traffickers. “A lot of what we’ve done has been more in the catalog space after the shows had some linear exposure around the world,” Lynn says. He adds that there is indeed an appetite for first-run—and global—from the streaming services, but notes, “When we’ve weighed up an option of a global deal on one hand or individual distribution opportunities on the other, for the most part, we have opted for the individual approach. We’ve done individual SVOD deals around the world with the likes of iflix, Showmax and others.” Outside of commissions and catalog sales, digital platforms are also creating opportunities for short-form content. ZDFE.unscripted’s Rückauer explains that this a tricky business, one the company got into years ago and has since abandoned. “We anticipated that the digitalization process in the
A/V industry would become an initial spark for shorter content and that people would watch clips on their mobile devices on a daily basis. This scenario came true. What we did not anticipate is that everybody can produce programs on his or her own these days. ZDF Enterprises’ concept with short content, contunico, couldn’t compete with quickly produced, usergenerated content shot on a smartphone at home. Platforms have a demand for shorter content, while educational institutions and print magazines have or are looking for adequate add-on products for their equivalent online pages. The other side of the coin is that distribution processes are the same, whether you sell a 72-episode series or a 100-clip package, but the price point per episode is of course very different. Same with material delivery processes and accounting and everything you do when you sell a program. These processes generate work and costs, no matter how long and expensive the license fee per episode is. So we decided in 2013 not to continue our contunico business any longer. It just was not efficient enough.” What producers are doing, however, is creating short-form clips from longer-form storytelling to use as marketing tools. “We make short-form videos from our factual programming and news-related materials and share them with online platforms such as Facebook,” says Sayumi Horie, the head of the global content development division at NHK. The Japanese public broadcaster also has a dedicated online destination, NHK 1.5ch, for its short-form videos.
GOING VIRAL “When we started the campaign for the world premiere of our feature film Brothers of the Wind—which starts in America in June—we put out a viral clip of an eagle chasing a mountain goat,” says Terra Mater’s Köhler. “It generated over 20 million hits. But we are not producing exclusively for short form.” VR and AR are other avenues for doc producers. The verdict is still out on how transformative they will be for the entire factual landscape. NHK has been successfully deploying VR projects, Horie notes, referencing one about Egyptian pyramids and another that took viewers inside the Fukushima nuclear reactor. “We are also trying to include VR in the actual TV programs for the viewers,” Horie adds. “I haven’t seen any feature storytelling in VR or AR,” Köhler observes. “They are superb little marketing tools for big narrative titles and they will become more important, but the real business in VR is gaming.” Rückauer says that ZDF Enterprises has done a fair amount of research in this area. “We developed outstanding programs which received many prizes and a lot of awareness. And we are proud to have sold them to many platforms and clients. But what we learned from our internal study is that VR and AR are very attractive for producers and the gaming industry, but less so for distributors like us. This content is so branding- and marketing-driven and not specialist/factual.”
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A perennially popular genre, crime docs are in a state of evolution. By Sara Alessi hen Netflix released its groundbreaking documentary series Making a Murderer in December 2015, it impacted not only the life of its subject, Steven Avery, and the way people viewed the U.S. justice system, but also the truecrime television genre. More and more people wanted to learn about real criminal cases, and they found they could do so on their couches, TV remote control in hand, leading to increased demand from channels and other platforms for factual crime content. Apparently, the age-old adage “crime doesn’t pay” doesn’t hold any water in the television industry. “Making a Murderer really spurred the growth of crime,” says Michael Lolato, GRB Entertainment’s senior VP of international distribution. “It has been a consistently popular category, but over the last several years it has experienced a new growth spurt. Everybody wants crime, and on multiple channels, not just those dedicated to the genre. It does very well around the world.” He adds, “The enrapturing aspect of Making a Murderer is that not only is it a fascinating, strange case, but there is a sheer injustice element to it that resonates with everybody. That’s why it did so well; not only did people get very involved in the case, but they felt it was a case of injustice.” And it ignited a desire in core crime viewers and TV audiences in general to see more.
DOING TIME “It put crime programming front and center,” says Nicky Davies Williams, the CEO of DCD Rights, of the Netflix success. People were surprised, she says, at “how intrigued the world was and also how faithful to a long series the audiences were.” And that sparked a change in how crime stories could be told. While returnable series with closed-ended episodes are still very much in demand since they represent the type of non-serialized programming that allows viewers to jump in and out, audiences now want and expect a more detailed investigation of individual cases. This yearning for more information has boosted the growth of multiple-episode storytelling within the crime genre. “The direct impact [of Making a Murderer] is that there’s now room for six- to eight-part, big-budget arced series, as
opposed to restricting crime to returnable series with selfcontained episodes,” says Emmanuelle Namiech, the CEO of Passion Distribution. “To be fair, the interest in a long-term investigation leading to a premium exposé was first generated by HBO’s The Jinx,” she adds, noting that “true-crime is one of those universal topics that fascinate viewers. In the same way that scripted has seen a resurgence of crime shows, factual crime programming has been on the rise.”
TURN UP THE VOLUME “Volume has become more important than it has ever been before,” says Paul Heaney, the CEO of TCB Media Rights. Having a significant number of episodes available is important for both serialized crime programs and those of the closed-ended nature as broadcasters can fill their schedules with these types of shows across the weekend and draw high ratings at the same time. Crime shows are particularly valuable for channels as they attract an “identifiable audience of regular, repeat viewers in the 25-to-54-year-old female demographic,” according to Jon Kramer, the CEO of Rive Gauche Television. “Channels want programs that have a lot of episodes.” Rive Gauche Television has several such long-running series in its catalog, including the 30-episode Evil Twins, the 33-part Happily Never After, the 36-episode Ice Cold Killers and the 45-episode Sins & Secrets. Rive Gauche is betting on a new crime show titled Homicide’s Elite, which Kramer believes will garner a strong following as well. After Making a Murderer became available, GRB received strong interest in its documentary Nelson Serrano: I’m Innocent. Like the Netflix hit, Nelson Serrano takes a deeper look at a case of possible small-town injustice. “When the details of Nelson Serrano’s situation were first covered, it was featured as a story segment, but we have in our catalog a longer documentary that offers much more information,” says Lolato. “People want details now; they want to see how crime stories unfold, and that is probably the biggest change in the genre.” Audiences find true-crime so gripping because the traditional whodunits and longer explorations tap into “universal themes of betrayal, lust, greed, revenge and overcoming adversity,” says Laura Fleury, A+E Networks’ senior VP, head of programming for international. “There is something uplifting—especially for women, who are more often at the wrong end of a crime story—to hear stories about
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GRB’s The Stalker Files looks at cases involving celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna.
how people overcame those situations, how justice was finally [served]. There’s certainly a thrill to crime content too. There’s a thrill of feeling suspense and of wanting to try to figure out human behavior.”
CRIME WATCH For the armchair detectives, Fleury believes watching crime programs is “cathartic, but not necessarily through watching someone else suffer. A lot of the crime stories we’re watching now have transcended the core crime viewer. They are stories that everyone’s interested in, and they have all of the great attributes of a traditional crime story—the race against time, incredibly high stakes, good guys and bad guys, and some sort of a resolution, or at least a pursuit of justice or call to action.” Munia Kanna-Konsek, the head of sales at Beyond Distribution, finds that “the important thing is that the audience needs a resolution. If the stories are left openended, they will not do so well. As viewers, we need closure, safe in the knowledge that the person who committed the crime has been brought to justice.” True-crime series are a “real-life whodunit,” echoes DCD’s Davies Williams. “The line that one has to tread is one that delivers a degree of distance, rather than having people being frightened of a knock on the door. The tone and nature of it must strike the right balance.” Along with viewers’ desire to see a resolution from their couch cushions comes an expectation for takeaways. This is the case particularly for female viewers, according to Davies Williams. “These viewers will ask themselves, ‘What have I learned from this? How can I avoid this?’ ” And if the program-maker can produce a series that has immediate ramifications when dealing with a case that has been broadly covered in the news, like Making a Murderer or Investigation Discovery’s Killing Richard Glossip from filmmaker Joe Berlinger, that can be a strong hook. Yet, she cautions, “It can be a difficult one to deliver.” “Production-wise, a program like Making a Murderer is very difficult to duplicate,” Rive Gauche’s Kramer concurs. “We shouldn’t fool ourselves that there are going to be 20 of these in the near future.” And because crime content has a shelf life, TCB’s Heaney warns against stockpiling this type of programming. “There are always new filming techniques being developed, or
new ways to do reconstruction,” he explains. Though there are, of course, many returning series, “you’ve got to be careful of expecting that your crime shows will keep selling. There is a lot of demand, but there is also a large supply, so recent history is telling us not to get too smug about having a lot of truecrime series in our catalogs.” The key, according to Rive Gauche’s Kramer, is that there must be “a crime and a solution. That’s the first thing. But then you have to take chances because you can’t keep doing the same thing all the time.” The company is enthusiastic about Something’s Killing Me, an investigative show that sets itself apart in that the crimes featured are medically based. Indeed, as GRB’s Lolato adds, “You can’t change crime stories, but you can change the way you present them.” As it turns out, it’s all about the storytelling technique.
THE PLOT THICKENS “Top-quality dramatic reenactments, exceptional production values as well as gripping storylines based on real-life crimes make for a deadly combination,” says Beyond’s Kanna-Konsek. “Add to that serious narration emphasizing and bringing to the fore the important points that help illustrate the victims’ tragic ends and what led the perpetrators to this point in their lives, then you are mesmerized.” She points to several shows in Beyond’s catalog that use this storytelling technique, including Deadly Women, Fatal Vows, A Stranger in My Home and The Will: Family Secrets Revealed. She has also found an increased interest in crime shows that can play in daytime slots, including blue-light series such as Highway Patrol, Motorway Patrol, Beach Cops and Highway Cops. “There’s always another angle, another way in,” TCB’s Heaney says of how producers can expose the underbelly of society. He points to a new addition to TCB’s catalog, A Killer’s Mistake, which is currently in production. It examines the “key moment when a killer managed to give him or herself away. So, that’s another way in to tell the story of a crime.” Confessions of a Serial Killer also takes a unique approach. “It uses the real audio of a murderer but inserts an actor to play the role” in the re-creation, Heaney says. Heaney also distinguishes between series made in the U.S. and those made in the U.K. “There’s a U.S. style that is slightly glossier that works all around the world, as seen in series such as Murder Made Me Famous and Copycat Killers, and there’s a grittier U.K. style that also works well.” “The overall bar of quality in storytelling and quality of execution is going up,” says Fleury of A+E Networks. “Production values have increased.” “The crime genre is a very broad one with many subgenres,” she adds. “The more traditional whodunit crime documentary continues to evolve. New shows are constantly being produced, with exciting, fresh ways of telling these stories, whether they are one-hour documentaries or eight-hour series.” Fleury continues, “Everyone was trying to crack, ‘What’s the live show that will drive viewership?’ ” Live PD, which offers a real-time look at law enforcement at work, was the answer.
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“Capturing law enforcement work as it’s happening, in the moment, is what makes Live PD so brilliant,” Fleury explains. “There are few other things that have the stakes that live law enforcement has and the show has resonated so directly with audiences. Viewers participate in discussions on social media. For the audience, Live PD is an experience that is more about what might happen next rather than a traditional show that looks at how a crime is going to be solved.”
TIMELY CRIME Another way to keep the genre fresh, DCD’s Davies Williams says, is by evolving with the crimes of the time and featuring topical felonies. DCD Rights is among several distributors offering shows on the perils of online dating. Swipe Right for Murder is a recent addition that has a younger skew due to the nature of the crimes covered. GRB has also expanded its offering to include topical wrongdoings with #Murder from TV One, featuring cases in which the crimes explored stem from online interactions. “It’s a very scary, real slice of life that’s going on right now, which adds to the show’s appeal,” Lolato notes. Winding up on the wrong end of the law can lead to public notoriety. TCB Media Rights’ Murder Made Me Famous examines incidences in which a crime brought infamy to the accused. “Murder Made Me Famous rates very well on REELZ in the U.S. and is an example of a series that will have a long shelf life,” Heaney says. Similarly, programs about crimes directly involving celebrities who already had a claim to fame before they were tainted by misdeeds offer another storytelling angle. GRB’s catalog includes Exposed, featuring stories involving Bill Cosby, Bernie Madoff and Anna Nicole Smith; The Stalker Files, covering stalking cases with Madonna, Steven Spielberg, Gwyneth Paltrow and other big names; and the brand-new It Happened Here. The new addition to GRB’s catalog puts an added twist on the celebrity crime story by examining where the unfortunate incidents took place. A dose of drama also provides a good hook to engage viewers. DCD Rights bridges the gap between crime drama and true-crime series with Real Detective. “It’s fascinating because the audience sees real detectives take them through a case that has haunted them,” Davies Williams says. “It is beautifully cast and the detectives are engaging. The show opens with the detective telling the story of the crime and then cuts to full dramatization. The show itself is 90-percent dramatized with voiceover and interjections from the detective. It fills an interesting gap and crosses drama with factual.” “Because these stories are so dramatic by definition, they translate well,” explains A+E’s Fleury. “They can be dubbed and subtitled, and the visualization, while not needing to be super graphic, is universal.
These are universal and incredibly relatable stories, so they travel well.” “A crime is a crime is a crime,” says GRB’s Lolato. “I’m seeing more and more now that crime stories don’t necessarily have to take place in your own backyard to be interesting.” The long-running series On the Case, for example, is shown around the world. “We sell the finished tape with host Paula Zahn, and some countries also buy the un-hosted version,” Lolato explains. “Some buyers like to put their own host in, but never affecting the actual story substance, which proves that a crime story is a crime story, and it translates.”
TRAVELING SLEUTHS Most often, finished tapes cross borders with ease. “U.S. and U.K. shows tend to travel the most in their original form,” says Passion’s Namiech. “There is no need to adapt them, save for the usual dubbing or subtitling.” The countries with the largest appetite for true-crime content are the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Italy, France and Germany. DCD’s Davies Williams finds that Eastern Europe is another strong buyer of this type of programming. Indeed, A+E’s Crime & Investigation network continues to pop up in territories across the globe, and the company has even launched a new OTT brand in the U.K., Kriminal, focused on crime programming. Digital platforms “are certainly an additional revenue stream, but the linear channels are still the major home for this genre,” says Beyond’s Kanna-Konsek. Yet, most distributors are finding that the space for truecrime on digital platforms is “steadily rising,” as TCB’s Heaney says. GRB has a deal for true-crime programming with Netflix, and DCD’s Davies Williams agrees that with cable and digital platforms alike on the hunt for true crime, “It offers quite a lot of choice of where to sell at the moment.”
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A Killer ’s Mistake is a new offering from TCB that looks at ten infamous murder cases from the last three years.
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Last year, Discovery Communications announced its intent to acquire Scripps Networks Interactive. The deal brings together some of the most popular factual brands in the payTV universe, from Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and ID: Investigation Discovery to HGTV, Food Network and DIY. David Zaslav, the president and CEO of the newly combined entity, Discovery, Inc., is well aware that viewers want total flexibility in the way they watch programming and he is leading his teams’ efforts to make content available on all linear and nonlinear platforms. Recognizing the social responsibility of a corporate group, he has also spearheaded Project C.A.T., an initiative that is dear to his heart and aims to double the global wild tiger population by 2022. By Anna Carugati TV REAL: What direct-to-consumer products are you offering? ZASLAV: We have a few now. In Europe, we have our sports streaming product, the Eurosport Player. Through Eurosport, the Olympics were presented on broadcast, on cable, on all platforms in a way that had never been seen in Europe before. A piece of that was Eurosport Player, where people were able to view every sport, every event, and that had never happened before in Europe. We have another direct-to-consumer product called Motor Trend OnDemand, which we are really excited about. We put our auto-TV channel Velocity in a new venture called Motor Trend [with TEN: The Enthusiast Network]. We put it together with 30 titles including Motor Trend and a big team in Los Angeles that’s doing short-form auto content. You can buy Motor Trend OnDemand for $5 [a month]. We’re the leader in car content around the world. We have more car auctions than anyone else. We see that vertical; if you love cars, eventually, not only are you going to be watching our car channels around the world, you’ll have Motor Trend OnDemand on your phone or your device. TV REAL: You have numerous businesses in Europe. Which ones are showing the most potential for growth? ZASLAV: The biggest potential for growth for us right now, in general, is that there would be some economic growth around the world. We’ve been able to grow our international business with effectively zero GDP growth in Europe for the past ten years—zero. And GDP and advertising tend to follow one another. In Latin America, there has been a lot of political disruption. We’ve become very efficient and effective in running our businesses and growing them during political and economic challenges. For the first time, it has started to look like there might be the beginnings of an economic recovery across Europe and Latin America. Not all of it but across some of it. That would be a big benefit to us because we are in more than 220 markets, in more than 50 languages and the advertising market has a direct correlation to GDP. If you see GDP starting to rise, it means there will be more money; the economies are stronger; people
will be spending more money on advertising because companies will be investing in growth. TV REAL: In the U.S., consumers are looking for smaller cable packages. Since your brands cater to super-fans, viewers will want them in their skinny bundles. ZASLAV: If you look at what people say they love about cable, between Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, OWN, TLC, ID, HGTV, Food Network and Cooking Channel, we have some of the most-loved brands in America. We also have the ability to go direct to consumer ourselves over time if, in fact, the existing distributors don’t launch a direct-to-consumer product, but I think they will. We are having a lot of conversations, and the distributors are quite smart. They are looking at what’s going on around the world, and they are looking at the decline here in the U.S. They are talking to their subscribers and are going on college campuses and seeing why people buy Netflix—it’s because it’s the only service they can buy for $8 a month. TV REAL: In 2016, Discovery announced Project C.A.T.: Conserving Acres for Tigers. How did it come about? This is particularly important to you, isn’t it? ZASLAV: Tom Brokaw [former NBC Nightly News anchor] and I became good friends from my time working at NBC. He told me about the concept of a rendezvous with destiny, which is something he writes about in his book The Greatest Generation, about the Great Depression generation that went on to win World War II. I believe solving wildlife extinction is our own rendezvous with destiny. If we don’t act, more than 50 percent of the species that exist on Earth won’t exist for my grandchildren. Project C.A.T. is one of the ways we’re taking action. There are fewer than 4,000 tigers left in the wild around the world, making them one of the most highly endangered species. We partnered with the World Wildlife Fund to help double the world’s wild tiger population by 2022, by preserving land space in India and Bhutan for them to live and reproduce.
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The true-crime genre has been a major part of A&E’s brand identity for years, but faced with increasing competition, the cable network knew it needed to innovate in this space. Courtesy of Big Fish Entertainment, it has done so with Live PD. In its second season, the show, which delivers live coverage of law enforcement officers across the U.S. for three hours each on Friday and Saturday nights, is the number one program on cable (excluding sports and movies) in its time slot among adults 18 to 49 and 25 to 54. Dan Cesareo, the founder and president of Big Fish, tells TV Real about the logistics of being live, the challenges for the control room as they jump from one location to the next and the importance of tracking socialmedia responses to the series. TV REAL: How did the idea for Live PD come about? CESAREO: [We are known for] taking a genre that has historically worked on television and finding a way to flip it on its head. That’s how we develop. With Live PD, we had been working closely with A&E and we knew that they were looking to make some bets in the live space. Until Live PD, we had never produced a live hour of television, but we were known as a company that was able to solve difficult production scenarios. We sold Live PD to A&E basically on a phone call. We didn’t know from a technological standpoint if we could pull it off at the scale we wanted to do it. It became a math problem. How many officers do you need to be with? How many cities do you need to film in for it to be compelling and for there to be enough activity that it’s an exciting and dynamic proposition live? We spent time looking at ride-alongs. We spent a lot of time talking about what ride-alongs look like and what the average length of a call is. With some fuzzy numbers and back-of-theenvelope math, we landed on this idea that we were going to have to be in a minimum of four to six cities, or with 8 to 12 officers, to carry two hours of programming. We sold the show to A&E as a two-hour block out of the gate. (You have to do two hours because the cost per hour is not going to make any sense on a one-hour show.) We knew that satellite presents all kinds of cost-prohibitive issues to be in more than a couple of cities. And then we were going to run into line-of-sight issues, and it felt like a very old-school, dinosaur approach to producing the show. We were aware of some pieces of technology that we thought would allow us to lower the cost and do it at the scale that we’re doing it at. We spent a year in development. The biggest problems we had to solve were access and the technological challenge of broadcast. How were we going to transmit all of this material? It was an 8x120-minute order to start with. The first few weeks were pretty bumpy. We had done some runthroughs, but there’s nothing like being live until you go live. There wasn’t a rhythm to it until about halfway into what was an expensive first run for A&E. We were showing little bits of growth and A&E believed in it. I don’t know if any other network would have had the stomach to stay in. They ordered another nine weeks. And then they said, Can we try three hours? We noticed that as we were going off the air at 11 p.m., there was always crazy stuff happening! The later you get, criminal activity and the busyness of law 374 WORLD SCREEN 4/18
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enforcement ramps up. A&E came back to us and asked to try a Saturday, so we did and that did well too. So A&E said, Can we have Friday and Saturday? We needed to add some personnel and more [police] departments if we were going to be broadcasting for three hours on Friday night and three hours on Saturday night. We were about 40 episodes in when they picked up the [additional] 100 episodes. TV REAL: In the studio, Dan Abrams and your experts are jumping back and forth between locations. How do you manage the logistics of that? CESAREO: The team that works on Live PD has over 10,000 hours of live news experience. Our director, John Gonzalez, has directed nine Super Bowls and six Olympic Games opening and closing ceremonies. Our teams in the field and the control room have a background in law-enforcement programming. It’s a marriage of those worlds that make it a success. The show can’t feel like the evening news, so we need people who are experienced in law enforcement and ride-along-driven programming, but none of those people have live television experience. It was also important that we bring a high level of journalism ethics to the table. In the control room, it’s controlled chaos. It’s like a car wreck every single night! It probably lacks some of the decorum and protocol that exists on other live shows because we genuinely never know what’s going to happen next. We program 126 minutes of content on Friday and Saturday nights and there’s no rundown. Even in live sports, someone is trying to put a ball in an end zone or a goal, so you have an expectation in terms of what is going to happen. That was a huge part of the learning curve. It’s such a challenging, frustrating and rewarding show to make. We’re still learning things. No two shows are the same and no two situations are the same. Dan Abrams has the hardest job in television. He has an amazing ability to manage the traffic in his ear—he can speak and listen at the same time. He can be talking about something and have the producer in his ear telling him where we’re going next. It’s hard. His ability to manage the flow of the show is incredible.
TV REAL: You’ve obviously seen a lot while filming the show. Is there any one thing that stands out to you? CESAREO: There is a slight delay because we do have a responsibility to the advertisers, the network and the viewers at home. That said, recently we had someone overdose lying in a parking lot. Officers had to give him multiple doses of Narcan before he responded. The crazy thing about it is, the very next night our officer gets flagged down as he’s driving on patrol—we’re live—and it is the guy who OD’d the night before, and he’s thanking the officer for saving his life! There have also been some hair-raising chases, some violent scuffles; you never know what’s going to happen. Any time there’s a full moon on a Friday or Saturday night, the most insane things happen. TV REAL: What are some of the other things you’re working on in the live space? CESAREO: We are now well positioned as one of the largest producers of live content in the country. We have new live projects in development with A&E and other networks. I look at live reality as a new genre. It took a while for the viewer to learn to watch it differently. The viewer was preconditioned for 25 to 30 years in terms of how a lawenforcement show worked. There had to be a payoff after however many minutes. The show drove towards that ending. Live PD is not always neat, we don’t always have perfect visual endings, our camera work can be bumpy in places because people are jumping over fences. It’s real. With how we’re approaching live moving forward, we’re trying to put the real back in reality.
TV REAL: What kind of feedback do you get from social media? CESAREO: As a company, we have some of the stickier, more social shows on cable. So we’ve always used it as a tool. What are people reacting to? What are they rejecting? The unique thing with Live PD is, we can monitor it as we’re making the show. We have real-time feedback on a second-by-second basis. I would never have predicted the show’s massive social following. It is typically, excluding sports, the number one social show on Friday and Saturday nights on cable. The viewers have deemed themselves Live PD Nation. [Viewer feedback aided in the capture of] eight people who were wanted. Several missing children were found. [Viewers] have alerted the departments that we follow that they witnessed people throwing out drugs or committing some additional crime while we’re broadcasting. Things are happening so fast in the control room, so it’s not stuff we noticed. It’s amazing. 4/18 WORLD SCREEN 375
A&E has committed to more than 100 episodes of Big Fish’s Live PD.
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BBC NHU From its Bristol headquarters, BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit (NHU) has been delivering high-end wildlife content for more than 60 years. Using state-of-the-art technology and compelling storytelling techniques, NHU has driven ratings for the BBC at home, and for broadcasters across the globe, with blue-chip event productions like Planet Earth II and, more recently, Blue Planet II. Earlier this year, NHU landed BBC Studios its first-ever external commission, with Discovery Channel ordering the two-hour doc The Red List. Julian Hector, the head of NHU, talks to TV Real about immersive factual filmmaking and the importance of bringing families together around a screen to celebrate the wonders of the natural world. By Mansha Daswani TV REAL: When you’re embarking on a big blue-chip project, how do you plan it all out and determine where and what you’re going to film? HECTOR: Although we often talk about the amazing craft of the cameramen and camerawomen who go and get all the images for us, we mustn’t forget production management, this tranche of the filmmaking business who map everything out. So before anything starts, a great team of researchers come on board, and they research stories all over the world. Those stories and how those stories could be filmed are then mapped out, and that’s when editorial come in and start piecing the programs together. And then it’s the huge logistic exercise of saying, Where in the world do we go? For Blue Planet II, one of the biggest decisions was spending money and committing time to submersibles. We spent more time underwater in submarines than in any other series in our history. TV REAL: Why did NHU want to revisit Blue Planet? HECTOR: Sixteen years after the first Blue Planet. So much has changed since then. There have been another 16 years of scientific discovery, 16 years of technical innovation, and 16 more years of humanity’s footprint on the oceans, for better or for worse. And we’ve barely touched the oceans, even now. TV REAL: What were some of the most surprising discoveries for you? HECTOR: It’s about getting into the minds of animals. I think a lot of people think fish are glassy-eyed still objects mainly on a fishmonger’s slab or in a supermarket. Some of the things we’ve been working with the marine biologists on is discovering the minds of fish. There’s a wonderful fish in the first episode [of Blue Planet II] called a tuskfish that actually uses a tool to open clams, which it feeds on. It goes, picks up the clam from the coral debris, swims to an anvil— it knows where it is, it happens to be a piece of rock in a coral head—and then it bashes the clam in its mouth against
this piece of rock and smashes it open. We associate animals as sentient as apes using tools, and some birds, but a fish using a tool? That’s cool. TV REAL: How do you prepare your cameramen for the potentially treacherous challenges they will encounter? HECTOR: They are amazing people. These big blue-chip pieces, as we call them, are made by specialists and those specialists are wonderful field workers. It’s not so much that we brief our teams about what it might be like to be very deep in isolation, we hand all that to the specialists and our people then have advisors around them—the scientists and the people who know how to do these things. But you’re right, the bottom line is, making these big pieces takes courage. TV REAL: How has storytelling in natural-history filmmaking evolved? HECTOR: Storytelling is everything now, and as storytelling evolves, all of us in the film industry move with it. The big thing about storytelling at the moment is, as far as possible, [you have to make it] character-driven and immersive, and the two go together. So you feel part of the environment and you feel part of the animals we’re filming. That means that the whole approach has to be one of either identifying individuals or being able to relate to the motivations of the animals in the scene. A great deal of time is being spent following the behavior with real detail and having scientists very close to us so we can share with the audience the things that matter to the animals. So rather than a God-like view of, that’s what happens, a voice from the sky, you feel as if you’re part of what the animal has to deal with to get on with its day. TV REAL: But when you have Sir David Attenborough narrating, you do still have that God-like voice! HECTOR: We’ve got immersive storytelling and God!
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Commissioned by BBC One, with BBC America and France Télévisions as co-producers, Dynasty is set to air later this year, narrated by Sir David Attenborough.
TV REAL: What has it been like working with him over the years? HECTOR: I love David. He’s loved by us at the Natural History Unit because he has been with us since our get-go, 60 years ago. He’s utterly authentic. He’s a broadcaster par excellence. That’s who he is—a broadcaster. And if you cut him in half, he’s got natural history right to the core. He’s a passionate advocate of the natural world. And it’s authenticity that makes him so cool today at 91. TV REAL: You enlisted Hans Zimmer to compose the orchestral score on Blue Planet II. How important is music to your productions? HECTOR: Score is very, very important. Get the score right and it guides the audience in how to feel about something. And it helps with the whole layered magic that we want to create. There’s actually quite a lot of music in Blue Planet II because we do need the music to help us. It’s remarkably difficult doing character-driven storytelling underwater, because most animals underwater look similar, so you need a few more words and you need a bit more music. Hans Zimmer was stunned by the content. I know he enjoyed helping to put it all together. TV REAL: What are some of the new projects you’re working on? HECTOR: We have Dynasty coming. It’s five shows where we have watched five individual groups of animals more intensely than we’ve ever done in the whole of our history. Five films—lions, tigers, emperor penguins, wild dogs in Zimbabwe and chimpanzees. It’s a story of power in all those individual species. What gets the leaders to the top? What does it take to stay at the top? How are they toppled? That’s why it’s called Dynasty. The premise is that these animals are living in a group for a reason and if they were living on their own they wouldn’t survive. On that, they agree. On everything else, they disagree.
TV REAL: The fantastic clip of the snakes and the baby iguana from Planet Earth II was a huge viral hit. Are you looking at short-form content pieces that can be used to promote the blue chips? HECTOR: Definitely. Social media is where different and new audiences are. It’s not that we’re just interested in using the digital media to super-serve the television. We know that in the digital world of social media, there are people who might not want to watch it on the telly and actually want it in short form and want to pass it around and say, Hey, this is cool. And we know that audiences can see something for three and a half minutes and feel completely satisfied that they’ve seen the equivalent of a one-hour show. So [those audiences are] different, they’re using our material in different ways. And of course we all love clips to be shared worldwide, don’t we? We all talk about virality the whole time, but the point is there’s a huge audience taking our work in a very different way and we want to find them and serve them there. The social media digital space is really important for us. TV REAL: We know how fragmented the media world is. How important are these big blue-chip docs in encouraging families to sit around the television together? HECTOR: They are fundamentally important. Even above the premise of your question, what these really big pieces do is put the natural world smack bang in the center of society. People want to make a date to watch them. And with all their layered messaging and wonder, the context might be the state of the planet, but the point is that they intrigue and they thrill. We know that people like to watch them as families—isn’t that wonderful? And we know they like to watch them again on replay services and what have you. Fundamentally we believe they keep the natural world in the minds of large numbers of people, which is what we want.
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