Curiosity’s Jorge Franzini

Natural history and wildlife has long been a pivotal genre under the umbrella of factual content. Over the last couple of years, it has continued to prove more than capable of connecting to audiences around the world—taking them on trips beyond their living rooms, introducing them to new ideas about conservation and combating climate change and giving them an up-close view of creatures big and small with whom we share the planet. Jorge Franzini, VP of original content, development and programming at Curiosity, talks to TV Real Weekly about the present popularity of natural-history content with viewers, connecting them to wildlife stories and how titles with animals at their center can raise awareness about the challenges facing our world.

TV REAL: What is the current international demand for natural-history and wildlife programming?
FRANZINI: It’s as strong as ever, particularly as we’ve all been confined to our living rooms and homes. The idea of a little bit of escapism and seeing the natural world around us—I don’t want to speak for others, but for me, it was a huge deal. It’s really reflected in the way that projects are being made right now, what commissioning editors are looking for. For Curiosity in particular, natural-history content that we’ve done in the last 18 to 24 months has done extremely well. It’s always been one of our major tentpoles, but it’s really fantastic to see the amount of viewership, particularly in our last few releases.

TV REAL: What is the key to connecting viewers to wildlife stories?
FRANZINI: When you’re talking about wildlife, the blue-chip element is still very critical—being able to see these majestic giants up close. Or even the opposite of that: seeing the little guys that you really never pay attention to take up your entire screen. That’s always a great hook to bring people in. One of the things I’ve been seeing, particularly in the past few years, is this mixing of genres. This is something that, for Curiosity, performs quite well. We look at wildlife shows as not just wildlife shows. They can be science shows. They can be history shows. They can be travel and adventure shows. Those hooks also bring in different audience members that perhaps weren’t so enticed right off the bat about wildlife programming, but coming into it, they’re completely blown away by those visuals. One great example of that for us is Evolve.

Evolve is a six-part series that we did with Patrick Aryee across four continents. It’s got really high-quality, top blue-chip filmmaking in terms of the natural-history sequences. But we’re also on this journey with Patrick to look at the way that we as humans are implementing what the natural world has mastered throughout its evolution—and how we can take that into new and emerging technologies to radically change the way we live in our world for the better. When you start doing those sorts of things, when you start putting boots on the ground and seeing the human element in it, viewers are really starting to resonate with that.

The other thing that I would say is that conservation when it comes to wildlife filmmaking is as important today as it ever was. What we’re starting to see a shift away from is the doom and gloom. We know that there are issues. The viewers know that there are problems. If all we do is beat people over the head about them and just talk about how horrible the state of things is and not present any sort of solutions-based ideas, most people will tune out. That is a huge detriment to the filmmakers and the stories that we’re trying to tell. We are seeing less doom and gloom, more solutions-based programming. Not to put a happy smile on it, but: Here are the people who are really working their butts off to make a change in the world when it comes to conservation. I think that’s something that we’ll continue to see. There’s certainly enough noise around us with all of the negative things that it’s really uplifting and inspiring to put a different spin on it. Filmmakers are really clever in that they’re doing that more and more nowadays.

TV REAL: Amid the increasingly urgent calls to more meaningfully address climate change, how big of a role can wildlife programming play in spreading the word?
FRANZINI: It’s absolutely essential that wildlife filmmaking is used as a hook to really make people understand how climate change is impacting the world. It’s hard for us, sometimes, to take a really global look at what’s happening, and wildlife habitats are getting absolutely decimated because of this. There is definitely a way to do this. [With Evolve], of course we’re highlighting the absolute latest technologies, but we’re also showing how we can implement what they’re doing to conserve the world around us—from the way we rethink how we build our cities and towns and things of that nature. Without being able to show the way that Mother Nature has done it or the way that wildlife has adapted, how are we ever going to understand the ways in which we can do it? It opens up eyeballs for folks to really get a grasp of the problems. You’re always battling to get your message across amid an ocean of noise. When you see wildlife, people are much more emotionally aware and empathetic to the fact that this is happening, and it’s happening very, very fast. That’s a huge part of how we can bring awareness to audiences across the globe.

TV REAL: What gives wildlife programming its global appeal?
FRANZINI: Wildlife is universal. The type of wildlife that you see is localized to the places that they are or are endemic to or where they come from, but we are all aware of what wildlife is, so it’s incredibly international. One of the things that we do quite well [at Curiosity] is allow the folks from these places to tell their own stories. That’s huge because it’s great to be able to hear about wildlife from those that know it best and who live with it every single day. That’s been big for us in the ways that we can tell our stories. Curiosity has over 4,000 titles on its flagship SVOD. There’s plenty of wildlife. The question for us, the balance for us, is: How do we tell new and different stories? The way that we do that is by having international storytellers be able to tell it because you’re getting different perspectives as to how this works.

Planet Insect is one title that we’re over the moon about—to be able to bring to your screen life-sized insects that we think of as simplistic organisms, when they’re not. In fact, without them, we wouldn’t be here. We’re really excited by the visuals on that one. Evolve, with Patrick Aryee—Patrick is such an amazing talent and so relatable, to be able to tell us these amazing wildlife stories and these amazing technology stories and how we can fix the world. I’m going to be altruistic here and say that the message behind it is that there are ways to improve. And to improve how we live, we need to improve the way we treat wildlife.

I think what [The Humboldt Current] team did during Covid-19, with a small team of majority Latin American filmmakers, is absolutely stunning. It just goes to show, to those who think we need to be sending out crews directly from our home to go film these things, that’s not the case. The locals can tell these stories and know them far better than we do. Let’s give them a chance because creativity is innate in all of us; it’s about giving them the tools and an outlet to be able to tell these stories.