TV Real: 2015 Year in Review

NEW YORK: The factual-programming industry has kept pace with the rapidly changing technological advancements of the TV market, and in a lot of ways, 2015 saw the segment even leading the charge with its digital strides.

The year kicked off with the launch of CuriosityStream, an ad-free SVOD service offering factual content, set up by John Hendricks, the founder of the Discovery Channel and former chairman of Discovery Communications. Discovery, too, ventured further into the digital world, launching the exploration-themed online network Seeker and rolling out the TV Everywhere service Discovery GO. Smithsonian Networks also made moves in the streaming space, debuting the SVOD offering Smithsonian Earth, featuring original nature and wildlife content.

It was a good year overall for factual when it comes to the opportunities presented by streaming platforms. These services have not only been acquiring documentaries, docuseries and the like, they’ve also gotten into commissioning original unscripted content. Amazon Prime, for example, swooped in to sign an exclusive deal with former Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May for an all-new motoring series—after Clarkson’s fracas with a producer got him ousted from the BBC series. (TV presenter and radio DJ Chris Evans later signed a three-year contract with the BBC to front the global hit.)

Netflix announced a collaboration with Planet Earth exec producers Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey for an eight-part natural-history series, Our Planet. One of the buzziest, binge-inducing series at the moment is even a Netflix original docuseries: the true-crime drama Making a Murderer. Another true-crime series, HBO’s The Jinx, made waves in 2015 with its all-too-perfectly timed finale coinciding with the arrest of the show’s central subject.

4K Ultra HD continued to be a hot topic in the factual community. In December, Blue Ant Media and Smithsonian Networks announced a new joint venture, Blue Skye Entertainment, which will develop and distribute 4K natural-history and wildlife content. Other digital trends in factual include virtual reality, which is becoming more viable for documentary producers to tap into for immersive audience experiences. Also, just recently, lifestyle-content leader Scripps Networks Interactive set up a new division, Scripps Lifestyle Studios, to produce content for multiple platforms, including social media, apps, websites and third-party digital outlets.

While all of these digital bells and whistles have certainly enhanced unscripted programming, what remains core to the genre are good, true stories, well told. And 2015 had no shortage of headline-making news that was examined in-depth by the doc community. From tragedies such as the Paris terrorist attacks and Charlie Hebdo massacre to natural disasters such as the massive earthquakes in Nepal to salacious scandals like the AshleyMadison.com hack, networks were quick to commission fast-turnaround docs and specials to dig deeper into these events. Another topical issue that has been in the spotlight is climate change, which is at the center of Discovery Channel’s Racing Extinction, National Geographic Channel’s Years of Living Dangerously and others.

The year also saw the return of Nat Geo’s Explorer, which aired for 25 years—the longest-running documentary series in cable TV history—and was relaunched in 2015 after a five-year hiatus. Perhaps the biggest news for National Geographic, though, was 21st Century Fox’s $725 million deal for majority control of the brand.

Another show that stirred up buzz in the factual arena was E!’s docuseries I Am Cait, which shines a light on Bruce Jenner’s transgender transformation. A spate of series and specials focusing on the transgender community followed on various international outlets. Survival shows also continued to prove popular, with U.S. President Barack Obama even taking part in an episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls that was sold globally.

Live events were all the rage in 2014, but last year there were only a small handful of these ambitious projects. Destination America pulled a Halloween-themed stunt with Exorcism: Live!, billed as the first-ever live televised exorcism. National Geographic Channel presented viewers with an awake deep brain stimulation surgery in a live two-hour special. Nat Geo also timed its launch of Mission Pluto to the New Horizons spacecraft’s historic flyby of Pluto.

Factual channels continued to embrace docudramas, with HISTORY prepping Barbarians Rising for this year and Nat Geo and Scott Free extending the Killing franchise with greenlights for Killing Reagan and Killing Patton. The line between fact and fiction ran too thin for some viewers in Channel 4’s spoof docudrama UKIP: The First 100 Days, which is set in a future where UKIP leader Nigel Farage won the U.K.’s 2015 general election to become British Prime Minister. The show sparked outrage and complaints and was investigated under Ofcom’s rules on offensive material, misleadingness and impartiality.

BBC Earth, which was among the new factual nets to roll out in 2015, even has among its commissions an original docusoap, Svalbard (working title), debuting this year. Other new entrants to the factual-channel landscape included Quest Arabiya, an Arabic-language, free-to-air channel for the Middle East and North Africa from Discovery. Turner, meanwhile, launched World Heritage Channel, a new pan-regional premium documentary network celebrating mankind’s greatest treasures, in Asia.

In the year ahead, the factual community can surely expect to hear buzzwords such as “streaming,” “VR” and “4K” bandied about. As these technologies become more affordable for everyday consumers to embrace, the unscripted programming marketplace will continue to transform. And TV Real Weekly and TVReal.ws will be keeping readers up to date with the latest developments and expert insights on all the pressing issues in the world of unscripted entertainment.