Sunny Side of the Doc | 19-22 June 2023

Documentary Business

Peter Hamilton Consultants, Inc

National Geographic Channel & Nat Geo Wild: What are they buying? Dan Salerno’s Program Schedule Analysis. A Pact Webinar

Are National Geographic Channel and Nat Geo Wild still buying programs as we move into the Streaming Era? What do they want from their producers? Veteran programming executive and highly-respected senior consultant, Dan Salerno dives deep into their programs schedules in today’s revealing webinar. This is episode #2 in a series produced by Pact, the …

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Discovery Channel & Animal Planet: What are they buying? Dan Salerno’s deep analysis of their program schedules. A Pact Webinar

Are the channels still buying programs as we move into the Streaming Era? That’s the key question that I explore with veteran programming executive and highly-respected senior consultant, Dan Salerno. And if the channels are buyers, what does Dan’s deeply-researched study of their program schedules tell us about what they want from their producers? Dan …

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Streaming services remain most popular destination for U.S. TV viewing in December

  Nielsen’s Gauge for December, reveals several very interesting findings: Streaming Trend: Full Year Streaming continued its reign as the top category, capturing 38.1% of total TV usage, Streaming usage gained 10.4 share points climbing from 27.7% of total TV usage. Peacock Breaks Through Peacock made its debut in The Gauge this month, with a …

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Netflix 2023 What You Need To Know Now


Sundance 2023: $852 Million Spent on Docs That Were Not Selected

A Sundance Film Festival award lags only behind an Oscar nomination as a measure of success for documentarians. 2.4%! Are those the odds that a documentary will earn a slot on the Sundance program? $852 million! Is that really the total production spend on all those submissions that missed out? Read on for my 2023 update on …

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David Bowie Tops Music Documentary Update. Huge Stars. Unique Access. New Footage. Mega Budgets

HBO Max‘s release of the David Bowie interpretive bio doc Moonage Daydream reminds us that the market leaders can spend big on Music: $25 million by Apple TV+ for Billie Eilish. $30 million by Disney+ for Elton John. In this post, Camran Shealy updates her July 2022 profiles of commissions that feature musical celebrities and …

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Best Documentaries of 2022: The Picks from the Players. The Oscar Noms & More

What were the critics’ picks for Best Documentaries for 2022? Caitlin Cooper surveyed Variety, Deadline, Sundance and more to provide links to their selections. Among them are prize-winning indies such as All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Bad Axe, and All that Breathes. Dominating the competition are Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream for HBO Max, and …

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Netflix 2023 What You Need To Know Now


Shedding Light on the Business of the Documentary Business. 2022 Report Card. Mission for 2023

My unchanging editorial goals since launching my Documentary Business newsletter in 2011 are to: Capture in a few words how the ever-evolving unscripted ecosystem shapes opportunities for industry veterans and rookies alike, and Publish detailed Case Studies that reveal how productions that aren’t by award-winning A-listers are developed, funded and ultimately delivered to grateful audiences. …

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New Industry Trends series with Pact kicks off with Ed Hersh’s exploration of the True Crime boom

Pact UK press release, December 2022. Pact has teamed up with Documentary Business‘ Peter Hamilton to present Industry Trends, a new Pact Growth Accelerator series exploring key industry trends in handy bite-sized chunks. The first episode, which is now live, shines a spotlight on the True Crime boom and features StoryCentric Founder Ed Hersh, who …

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