Buyer Profile: Rachel Job

Rachel Job, the head of acquisitions and commissioning for HISTORY and Military History at AETN UK, shares her strategy for serving the demands of the channels’ niche audiences.

TV REAL: How much are you acquiring compared to commissioning?
JOB: HISTORY is about 65-percent, pushing 70-percent acquisitions, of which the shows predominantly come from HISTORY in the U.S. The content there is fantastic; it’s suited very well for us, so we’re taking a lot from them at the moment. We have an output deal, and we’ve increased that recently. We’re buying a little bit on the open market, but that’s become slightly smaller to make room for more commissions. We’re commissioning about 15 percent.

Military History is primarily an acquisitions-only channel. We’re talking half a dozen hours a year of commissions, if that. We have a high repeat rate on the channel. There’s a lot of [A+E Networks] content on there, a lot of older A+E content, but we’re actually purchasing a lot in the open market for Military History: around 50 percent or 60 percent.

TV REAL: Where are you buying from within the international market?
JOB: It’s a mixture: there’s a lot of older BBC Worldwide content, a lot of Channel 4 content. Military History is only currently available in the U.K. and Ireland, so I have a clear U.K. focus. With Military History, the beauty of that content is it doesn’t really date. There’s a lot of very good British military content that’s been made in the past that’s available through U.K. distributors. I’m also buying content from Breakthrough Films & Television in Canada—I bought Greatest Tank Battles from them recently and I bought a series called Combat Forces from them last year, which is modern military. We don’t just do military history, we do combat stories [and more]. I’m buying a little bit from Australia and obviously a lot from Germany, through ZDF Enterprises.

For HISTORY I’m buying from companies like Cineflix and ZDF Enterprises, because they do a lot of ancient history, which I do pick up bits of. [I also buy from companies that have] slightly more factual-entertainment content, rather than straight factual suppliers, so a little bit from distributors like ALL3MEDIA International.

TV REAL: What has been your strategy for commissioning?
JOB: I’ve commissioned a lot of series in the last six months, and most of those are now in production or preproduction. We’re always looking for new series or ideas. In the past we’ve commissioned a lot of one-offs, but the drive is very much four or five series a year. Actually, the big gap I’ve got at the moment is one-off specials. I’m only looking to do two next year, but our budgets are higher than they traditionally have been and we are really looking for some noisy, big event stuff that’s a bit more core-history than perhaps some of our series may have been.

Click here to continue reading about Job’s current shopping list for HISTORY, her take on the channels’ distinctive programming and what qualities she looks for with a commission.