TV Real Festival Recap

Those of you who have been following our busy summer of virtual festivals will know that I’ve been on the hunt for uplifting stories amid what has felt like a downbeat content production and distribution business amid strategy shifts, economic woes and fears about the impact of AI. With conversations with channel and streaming programmers, producers and boutique distributors, the TV Real Festival—available to view on-demand here—set out to explore the obstacles in the business today and, crucially, innovative approaches to tackling those issues head-on. The overall takeaway from these sessions: companies that are agile enough to pivot when needed will be able to find a way through the maze that is the global content business right now.

At global giant National Geographic, the goal to keep ambition on-screen has resulted in a “fewer, bigger, better approach over the last couple of years,” said Tom McDonald, executive VP of global factual and unscripted content, in his opening keynote. “Rather than try and 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 will stand out on Disney+. We’re taking a streaming-first approach. It’s great that we have linear channels around the world, 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.”

“We are in strangely tough times,” said Richard Bradley, co-founder and chief creative officer of All3Media-owned Lion Television. “People have become more risk-averse; they’re making fewer decisions, postponing decisions and battening down the hatches around the familiar. The question has been, is this here to stay, or is it cyclical? The difficult news is it probably isn’t going to come back to the way it was, and what we’re seeing at the moment is the way of the future. There’s going to be fewer decisions, less commissions made and probably a more risk-averse decision-making process.”

Ultimately, Bradley said, the goal is devising projects “that the commissioners find impossible to resist. A commissioner once described their role as finding a thousand different ways to say no. To those of us out there who are on the other side of the fence, let’s put our thinking caps on and try and find ways to make them say yes. It’s getting harder, but it’s not impossible.”

Focusing on buyers’ needs has long been a priority for Paul Heaney, founder and CEO of BossaNova Media, which has held Development Days bringing together buyers and producers for years. Apps allow buyers to vote for projects they like, “which then informs our whole greenlight process,” Heaney said. “That breathes oxygen into what we need to do. It’s a crucial part of the business now. 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.”

Drilling further into the indie distribution space, I convened a wonderful panel with TVF International’s Poppy McAlister and Albatross World Sales’ Anne Olzmann, who shared how their boutique outfits are navigating the landscape today.

For McAlister, one of the most significant pressure points for indie distributors is the need to help deficit finance productions. “There are so few full commissions nowadays that distributors have to get involved much earlier, helping piece together the financing. When it works, it’s so rewarding—when you can find those presales, or it might be that we can invest ourselves. The toughest thing is when you have to say goodbye to some amazing projects that are still being developed, but we just can’t find the international money.”

Olzmann agreed, adding, “As an independent distributor, we have to stand out much more than we used to. A lot of buyers buy packages instead of one-offs or two hours, so that’s become a bit trickier—the buying behavior is a bit unpredictable at the moment. We know there’s a shrinking volume in presales, so, as Poppy said, we need to be ready to invest a bit more than we used to. That’s mostly the problem for mid-budget and maybe the non-franchise factual programs. It’s tricky to navigate this whole new universe that is in constant change.”

Evolving to meet the needs of the market, Curiosity has adapted its business from an emphasis on subscriptions to one also encompassing content licensing and advertising and sponsorships, Clint Stinchcomb, the president and CEO of Curiosity, said in his keynote. He also weighed in on the increasing role of co-pros and acquisitions at the company, noting, “You need brand-definitional content, but then at the same time, you need breadth and depth. Acquisitions and co-productions are critical. There’s no substantive business without them. We’ve created a lot of high-dollar originals. We know what works for our various platforms. We’re doubling and tripling down on acquisitions in the areas we need them.”

On the importance of co-productions, Gernot Lercher, who heads up ORF’s storied natural-history brand UNIVERSUM, put it fairly succinctly when he said, “No co-production means no documentary. Putting money together is the only way to get things done.”

Lercher was joined in that session by Marion Camus-Oberdorfer, director of acquisitions and distribution investment at ORF-Enterprise, the Austrian pubcaster’s commercial arm that has been critical in helping to get Lercher’s commissions made. “The budgets from one single broadcaster or one single producer are not enough to do a high-end quality production,” she said.

Independent producers struggling to make sense of the market today should take solace from our fantastic sessions with Muck Media’s Mariana van Zeller and Cristina Costantini and 11:11 Media’s Bruce Robertson. Undaunted by a constricted commissioning landscape, both of those indies are emphasizing being unafraid to pivot and embracing every possible opportunity.

Founded by five friends, Muck Media has assembled a portfolio of some of the buzziest factual shows on linear and streaming, including Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller on National Geographic, Karol G: Tomorrow Was Beautiful on Netflix and Sally on Hulu.

“People will always want good stories,” Costantini said. “We’re going to try to find ways to do it in the way that we’re proud of in these different mediums. So, YouTube, TikTok, all of it, I think it’s exciting if you’re down to play in the sandbox.”

“It used to be that if you just knew how to pick up a camera and tell a story and edit, that would be enough,” van Zeller said. “No longer. You really have to figure out how to read a contract, how to sell, how to find financing and how to play in the sandbox of all these new mediums. At the end of the day, our biggest advice is determination and keeping at it because you’re going to get millions of no’s. We are used to getting rejected constantly. So, persistence but also optimism.”

Robertson, chief storyteller at 11:11 Media, the next-generation media company founded by reality TV icon Paris Hilton and Bruce Gersh, also remains optimistic about the way forward for companies that can be nimble in navigating the landscape. “This industry is built and thrives on creativity and innovation. We’re beginning to see the green shoots coming through with people pivoting. For a period of time, brands were shut out of the streaming platforms because they were all very subscription-based, and now, of course, that’s pivoting to successful ad tiers. Also, FAST channels are reinventing and rethinking. There are different independent financing models. The branded-content side of things ten years ago was a dirty phrase, but now brands have pivoted and figured out a different way to integrate into storytelling in ways that didn’t feel intrusive to the audience.”

Similarly, Tom Neff sees enough demand for indie docs that he is relaunching Documentary Channel, previously a cable network, as a streaming destination. “We want to be a home for the independent documentary filmmaker. There is a crisis going on in the industry right now in terms of venues where documentary films are being shown. 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 and we want to promote the industry.”

Watch the TV Real Festival on-demand here.