Wildlife creators TV producers should know about

Wildlife and natural history have long been staples of TV: from David Attenborough’s flagship cinematic titles through to nature and animal programming for children. Similar to other genres however, natural history can find itself with a squeezed middle; where production companies who make mid-budget natural history shows increasingly feel it is hard to compete with the scale and capabilities of the BBC Natural History Unit, nor the lower budgets of kids or daytime output.

Over on the internet, the natural world is an evergreen genre which appeals to a broad range of audiences. There is demand for the library of high quality wildlife and natural history programming out there, and as a result there are numerous channels acquiring, packaging and monetising existing archive programming. To give just one example of these types of channels:

Real Wild
YouTube subscribers 1.85m
Video views 326m
Facebook 1.5m followers

Owned by Little Dot Studios, this channel aggregates and re-packages wildlife programming from global production companies and broadcasters. Below is an example of the trend for longer videos on YouTube, especially for content that might be targeted at kids. The video below is 2 hours 20 minutes long, but is actually three episodes of an Australian series called ‘Baby Animals Around the World’ that has been cut together, and given a YouTube friendly title and thumbnail.

Beyond acquiring and re-packaging TV shows, there are many creators across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, all exploring their own niches in the wildlife category, while also finding ways to make content without the budgets or depth of film making experience that normally comes with natural history production.

As mentioned in previous posts, the opportunity in the direct to consumer market comes from the fact that beyond the usual niches (food, interiors, comedy, fitness, games shows and so on), there are a myriad of sub-niches that can be created. And here in wildlife and nature, you can see that process in action. For example, there is a big niche around wildlife photography, which crosses over into kit and photographic techniques as well as animals and natural world. Similarly, there are numerous creators who make environments for animals and then observe what happens - this crosses over into hugely popular building, construction and crafts niches. Finally, there are also many creators in this space who are scientists, and therefore they are using their expertise around nature to educate their audiences, which often is targeted at kids.

And so, here are some examples of creators producing content for audiences who love wildlife and the natural world (some of which are making quite a lot of money in the process).