Viasat World’s Seniha Tunaboylu Eyeing Factual Acquisitions at NATPE

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Seniha Tunaboylu, head of content and acquisitions for Viasat World, is at NATPE Budapest International looking for “new content across all of our channels,” with a strong focus on factual for networks such as Viasat Nature, Viasat History and Viasat Explore, as well as period dramas for the newly launched Epic Drama.

In all, Viasat World offers 27 pay-TV channels in 50-plus countries as well as on-demand services in key territories. The bouquet of factual channels has formed the basis of its pay-TV business for more than a decade. This includes Viasat History, “for which we need top-quality history programming,” Tunaboylu tells World Screen Newsflash.

For Viasat Explore, the focus is on “informative factual entertainment aimed at male viewers.” The programming on Viasat Nature, meanwhile, should present “new ways of looking at animals and the natural world.”

“With the recent launch of Epic Drama, we now need bold and lavish period dramas to supply serialized content for that channel,” adds Tunaboylu.

There’s also the African channel Viasat Life, “which carries factual-entertainment shows aimed at a female African audience and is full of inspiring, celebratory shows.”

Regarding acquisitions for specific slots, Tunaboylu says it’s still early days for Epic Drama, which launched in December 2017, “so we will consider period drama series for all slots as we have a pipeline to supply, and lead-in times for drama productions can be much longer than for factual shows.”

For Viasat Explore, “we are always looking for entertaining men-at-work franchises that feature big characters and big logistical challenges—our viewers have watched this style of show in large numbers for a long time now, and as our older shows come to the end of their lifecycles, we’re always looking for new ideas in this area for prime time and access prime time.”

For Viasat History, Tunaboylu explains, “we have maintained successful slots for historical mystery and conspiracy shows for many years as well as a very successful run of ancient world-style programs, so we’re always on the lookout for new content for these slots as well.”

She says it has been challenging to find “off-the-shelf shows for our Explore channel. There are some great ideas for Explore shows out there that we’re happy to look at, but we can’t prebuy or co-produce everything for the channel, and unlike content for Viasat History and Viasat Nature, there’s fewer quality completed Explore shows. With the exception of fishing and hunting programs, which are fairly readily available, we’ll be looking hard to identify readymade content across all genres for Viasat Explore.”

Another challenge, according to Tunaboylu, as with all thematic pay channels, is “the need to encourage return viewing. While we do acquire some one-offs—let’s face it, the factual TV market is not short of them—we are also looking to secure more longer-running series that our viewers can get to know and love, especially for Viasat History and Viasat Nature. Also, our viewers really seem to appreciate factual content presented by experts and enthusiasts, rather than by ‘voice-of-god’ narration or by celebrities, so we will be interested in any expert-driven shows featuring presenters who really help our viewers make a connection to the world that we’re showing them through our programs.”

“We pride ourselves on being expert content curators, and much of our programming is less than three years old,” she tells World Screen Newsflash. “So, while we are looking to grow our co-commissions collection, we don’t carry a lot of expensive commissions that need to remain on the channels for years to earn their ROI. We can be much more responsive to new trends and changes in our audiences’ tastes. As a result, we can change our focus with every new market, depending on our recent program successes. For example, we have some car shows that have performed very well recently on Viasat Explore and will be considering anything new and exciting in that genre. And for Viasat Nature, although our viewers have always loved our blue-chip nature series, we’ve noticed a recent uptick for that genre, probably spurred by the international success of shows like Blue Planet II and Planet Earth II, so we’ll be looking for more in that vein.”