Channel Profile: Planet Green

ON THE RECORD: DAN RUSSELL, VP, PROGRAMMING & SCHEDULING

How do you schedule the channel from morning through late night, Monday through Sunday?
There is a big change taking place. Since launch we have been programming in an eight-hour wheel from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. and then it turns around. The programming has been almost entirely original. We have moved to a full 24-hour schedule with dayparts. Since the second part of 2009 we have been acquiring aggressively. We are going to move to having about 70 percent of programming original or co-productions and the rest acquired, which is very big change. We are continuing to evolve. Our viewers do not only define themselves as green. They are interested in sustainability and advocacy and moving the human race forward. Green might be seen as a fad, but sustainability is forever. In keeping with that, our prime-time slot is branded Verge and it showcases mavericks, misfits and innovators who are helping the planet to the verge of a better tomorrow. Our Saturday night slot called Reel Impact offers feature documentaries.

Are you acquiring content from the international market?
We have acquired a large amount of international programming. Most of the 75 hours of prime-time shows that we have bought are international, from Europe and Canada. These include a number of acquisitions from U.K. companies, including Passion (Nature Inc.), Digital Rights Group (Big Chef Takes On Little Chef ), Outright (Blood, Sweat & Takeaways and Blood, Sweat & T-Shirts) and BBC (Pursuit Of Happiness and Rich, Famous & Homeless). We bought The Woman Who Stops Traffic from Fremantle. We acquired the first season of Conviction Kitchen from Canada’s Cineflix and bought the second season, as well as an option to produce a U.S. version. We are also co-producing The World’s Greenest Houses with Cineflix. We have acquired 15 to 20 feature documentaries over the past 10 months, many of them from the international market.

Are you buying second-run content from within the U.S.?
One series that we acquired second-run is called 30 Days, from Shine (18 hours). We also bought the first two seasons of Living With Ed second run from Brentwood Communications but will produce the third season as an original series.

What is your approach to commissioning new productions from U.S. producers?
We bought the first two season of Living With Ed second-run but will produce the third season as an original series. We are also making the original series Operation Wild with Greif Co. Other new productions are Future Food, a co-production with Gala Films, and The Fabulous Beekman Boys, produced by World of Wonder.

Do you have any blocks or slots you are looking to fill?
We are absolutely open for business. Our prime-time slots are naturally a priority because that’s where our advertising revenue comes from, but we are also interested in daytime and fringe. We are looking for characters. Nonfiction programming is about strong characters. We are looking for programs that feature big characters with a strong desire to effect change. We have a new program called The Kamen Code, produced by Radical Media, about the inventor Dean Kamen, that would illustrate this, as would Conviction Kitchen or Blood, Sweat & Takeaways.