Docsville

Documentary Business

Peter Hamilton Consultants, Inc

‘Sweet Spots’

What do channels pay for documentary productions?

Building Impossible: Nat Geo Refreshes a Traditional Factual Genre with Hoff Productions. How They Did It!

Building Impossible with Daniel Ashville stands out as our Summer Case Study selection: The series may signal a renewed appetite for a Factual genre – Engineering – that has been a pillar of documentary channel schedules. Hoff Productions refreshed the genre with a new talent who successfully crosses over to TV from the social media economy. …

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discovery+ leads “Most Streaming Sign-ups” in January: 19% of all U.S. SVOD new subscribers

discovery+ tops the SVOD “Most Streaming Sign-ups” list for U.S. in its launch month. discovery+ accounts for a 19% share of US SVOD signups in January according to new data released by ANTENNA, a subscription insights provider. That puts d+ ahead of HBO Max (14%), Disney+ (13%) and Hulu and CBS All Access (each with …

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discovery+ Report Card: 11 million subscribers. What does it mean? A Dan Salerno podcast

Discovery’s new streamer discovery+ released early subscriber data: 11 million have signed up in the few weeks after launch. I ask veteran programming exec Dan Salerno: What can we learn from the numbers? Is discovery+ ‘cannibalizing’ the channels’ program pipeline and ultimately revenues? Where are the documentaries that made the Discovery brand? Dan gives a …

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Netflix 2023 What You Need To Know Now


SELLING YOUR DOCUMENTARY TO NETFLIX: My new resource-packed online course. Now with a 700-program online database

Selling Your Documentary to Netflix

SELLING YOUR DOCUMENTARY TO NETFLIX is my new, resource-packed course designed for both industry professionals and developing talents. The online course features: How to pitch your project effectively! A unique 700-program database of Netflix originals & acquisitions Step-by-step video tutorials Worksheets, and other downloads Proposal templates, and much, much more… The course includes NETFLIX 2021: …

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Oscar Documentary Award 2021. APOCALYPSE ’45: The Road from Concept to Qualification

The Academy announced the eligible candidates for Oscar consideration in the Documentary Feature category for 2021. APOCALYPSE ’45 is one of the candidates. Don’t miss our detailed Case Study of how producer / director Erik Nelson developed and completed his gripping archive-based project for Discovery. Case Study APOCALYPSE ’45: Discovery’s powerful WW2 documentary in virtual …

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Nielsen’s Streaming Ratings 2020: Positive Takeaways for the Documentary / Unscripted Sector

Nielsen released their Top 10 Streamed Programs for 2020 (U.S.) in three categories: Originals, Acquisitions and Movies. Their key metric is Minutes-Streamed-per-Show. In the Originals category, the Top 10 is led by OZARK with 30.5 billion views in 2020. TIGER KING is #4 with 15.6 billion views. When I looked deeper into the data, I …

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Netflix 2023 What You Need To Know Now


PBS’s Science Strand NOVA: The production pipeline, sources, new digital platforms and more…

I turned my spotlight on to the NOVA strand in time for next week’s virtual World Congress of Science & Factual Producers. NOVA is PBS‘s science documentary powerhouse brand. Now enjoying its 5th decade on broadcast, NOVA is expanding across multiple digital platforms including YouTube, podcasting and more. Read more here about NOVA’s pipeline, funders, co-pro …

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BBC STORYVILLE: Mandy Chang guides her legendary documentary strand through COVID turbulence. Our panel at virtual CCDF-CNEX

Mandy Chang, commissioning editor BBC-STORYVILLE recently joined my panel at Taiwan’s virtual CCDF-CNEX Documentary Conference. In this post, we recap Mandy’s valuable insights into the legendary STORYVILLE stand, and the impact of COVID on the BBC’s documentary commissioning process. Our fellow expert panelists were: Hong Kong-based, Phoenix TV exec Haibo Huang And from Washington DC, veteran …

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