Self-financing TV production, the importance of marketing your shows plus more streamers get into live TV
This week an interview with actor, filmmaker and TV producer Mark Duplass referenced two big themes that (in my opinion!) are increasingly important for navigating the disrupted new normal that is the TV and film industries.
Firstly, the importance of being enthusiastic and adept for the business side of TV as much as the creative aspect. And secondly, the increasing need for production companies to take more ownership of marketing their shows, rather than leaving it all up to the broadcasters and streamers.
Attitude, marketing and new finance models: Insights from Mark Duplass
Mark Duplass (who plays Chip, Jennifer Aniston’s long-suffering producer on ‘The Morning Show’) has been a producer of indie film and now TV for 20 years. This week he did an interview with Matt Belloni about his experiences of self-financing his own TV show ‘Penelope’, doing a short licensing window with Netflix in the US and getting Freemantle on board for distribution outside the US. It is 30 minutes, and definitely worth a listen:
While the primary focus of the interview is the business deal behind ‘Penelope’, there are other points he makes that could have real resonances with TV producers in the UK as they look to navigate the market now and in the future.
Firstly, he talked about his approach and attitude to life and his work, describing himself as a creative person but also a business person (it brought to mind the old adage that the industry is called ‘show business’ not ‘show show’). Calling himself a New York City rat, you can’t help but notice his enthusiasm and excitement not just about the creative side of his work, but equally the business side as well - stacking up finance, doing distribution deals, making his own marketing materials, running social ad campaigns and so on. The vibe is of an energetic creative hustler; in his element exploring new models for financing great TV, and then the joy of actually, you know, getting it made and out there for audiences, while maintaining a relatively high level of control.
He makes the connection that this approach has always been part of the indie film financing world. And of course, for UK TV producers working in specific areas such as kids and scripted, this has increasingly been the new normal for quite a number of years as the 100% broadcaster funded commissioning approach retreated for these more expensive genres. However for other producers more used to established and predictable production deals and rights positions, navigating the world of emerging financing models presents a newer challenge.
The sentiment he seems to be conveying is that a key for survival is an attitude that turbulence is something to be excited about, and that enthusiastically chasing down new business models is just as important as the creative aspect for companies and producers to be able to thrive in this disrupted world.
Secondly, he talks about doing his own marketing for the show. It isn’t totally new for some producers to run their own PR and marketing activity for their titles in parallel with broadcasters, although many leave it largely up to the broadcaster or streamer. And it has long been a source of frustration when broadcasters don’t or can’t put as much marketing welly behind a title as the producer hopes for. However, that Mark says he’s been buying social ad campaigns is a reflection of a view that TV production companies could (should?) be more proactively marketing their shows in ways that complement rather than duplicate the activities of the broadcaster or streamer. To do this requires shows to be considered more as products with a life that extends in all directions beyond the TX window. Over the coming years, production companies may look to develop the in-house capability to design and run more fulsome marketing strategies for all their titles.
Thirdly, he makes the point that over the coming year more film financiers will start investing directly in TV as the potential returns are greater (perhaps reflecting Marlon Wayans’ points a few weeks ago of the appeal of the syndication model). In Mark’s prediction, there will be a dearth of content in 12 - 18 months time thanks to the current slow down, plus he believes audiences will also have tired of the homogenised nature of what is being produced at the moment (he references the volume of true crime across all networks and platforms as an example). Simultaneously, networks and streamers are wanting award-winning standout shows (such as ‘Baby Reindeer’), but in the current environment, taking such risks is tricky. His belief is that by making the pilot himself, there is an actual show that can be given to distributors to see if it can be sold into new territories, thus in theory reducing the risk for everyone involved. Together he hopes this is creating more opportunities to get different and more risky TV off the ground. Although yes, he is the first to admit having Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon posting to Instagram about your show certainly helps (never mind the 186,000 followers he has himself plus nearly 400,000 on X).
This is an enjoyable interview, and Mark is refreshingly honest as well as optimistic despite the challenges facing TV and film.
Streamers getting more into Live
Certainly within the UK, live TV has been one gap between Netflix and Amazon and the broadcaster streaming services. Here, streaming live TV channels has been a core part of the various broadcaster offerings in the UK for nearly 20 years. Indeed, my first project when I joined Channel 4 in 2006 was ‘Channel 4 simulcast’, where users could register and watch a live stream of the channel’s output (although not all of it - some content such as films were blocked as the rights for broadcast didn’t include streaming to the web).
Other streaming services have included live TV as part of their offering for quite some time - Hulu for example includes 95+ live TV channels for a monthly fee of $76.99 and YouTubeTV includes 100+ channels for $72.99 a month. Both of these are not available in the UK.
However, recently it was reported that Netflix is in discussions with Buzzfeed about streaming live versions of the hugely popular YouTube show ‘Hot Ones’: n a nutshell, famous people being interviewed while eat super spicy food. It has already hit mainstream crossover status enough to feature as a skit in Saturday Night Live (and yes this is just an excuse to include a video of Maya Rudolph being hilarious).
Netflix has already dabbled with live shows, mainly in sports (WWE and NFL games), but has also tried talk shows and a live Joe Rogan special.
Apple TV+ also has experimented with live (or as live) scheduled shows, including ‘The Problem with Jon Stewart’. However the show was cancelled after drawing much smaller audiences than broadcast and cable rivals. A New York Post article reported:
The show’s first episode was seen by just 180,000 US homes in the first week it debuted last fall, measurement firm Samba TV said. That number dropped to 78% to 40,000 by its fifth episode, which aired in early March. Stewart’s comic rival John Oliver, meanwhile, pulled in viewership of 844,000 US homes for a March episode of his HBO show, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” Samba TV reported.
Recently Jon Stewart has given his view on differences of opinion around show’s content, plus the ratings may also just be a reflection of the challenges Apple TV+ has had in building regular usage of the platform in general over the success they’ve had with individual titles such as ‘Ted Lasso’ and ‘Slow Horses’.
Obviously, these are all individual shows as live events rather than a linear TV schedule being live streamed 24/7, it does show more attempts by streamers to build appointment-to-view shared viewing moments with audiences via sports as well as entertainment, talkshow and comedy formats.
Investigations toolkit
Bellingcat, the investigative journalism collective, have for the first time opened up their online investigations toolkit to enable users to interrogate areas such as satellite imagery and maps, authenticate images and video, dig into social media or archived websites, transportation and other data sources.
This is a rich resource which may be useful for producers working in news and current affairs, but also in documentary and other genres.
Here is a useful explanation about the toolkit and how it can used (and the ethos behind it), and the toolkit itself is available here.
Now that’s one way to unpick how formats work
Lastly, a bit of fun… development exec Will Stanbridge (who was lead developer on the Channel 4 hit show ‘The Jury: Murder Trial’) this week shared a PDF document of all of the pre-titles for unscripted shows he’s written down over the last decade or so of watching and working in TV.
He says he kept the log of a broad range of shows “so I could take the basic idea apart format-wise, but also to teach me how to write more in that style”. He shared it on LinkedIn with the idea that it may act as an inspiration for junior researchers and APs to help them develop their thinking too.
The document runs to 97 pages, which is quite a lot of pre-titles! It is a great insight into the way just one development person has approached building their own understanding on how to create winning formats.
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