HISTORY’s Jana Bennett

Jana Bennett, the president and general manager of HISTORY, tells TV Real about how she’s building on the platform’s success.

Consistently ranked as a top-ten basic-cable network in the U.S., HISTORY’s mission is to connect audiences with history in “informative, immersive and entertaining” ways across multiple platforms. The channel, led by Jana Bennett as president and general manager, has been doing that with signature unscripted series like Pawn Stars and Alone and, increasingly, fact-based drama like the upcoming Knightfall. Bennett joined A+E Networks in 2013 to lead FYI and LMN, and moved over to take the reins at HISTORY last year.

TV REAL: Moving over from FYI last year, what strategy did you want to implement at HISTORY?
BENNETT: I was very aware of what a strong brand it was. That was something to continue to keep developing. In a way, history spans all of time, so there’s a huge storybook that is available to us as storytellers to think about. We can keep defining the brand as we evolve the next generation of programs. I love factual-based storytelling and historical storytelling, so I’m looking at, What haven’t we done? What else can we do to keep cracking open new territories? We have a built-in audience who likes history, but we also need to reach out to the next generation and the one after that to keep refreshing our appeal. And something else has happened. There is a quote from [Vladimir] Lenin about how sometimes it feels like it takes decades for anything to happen and other times in history a decade’s worth of things happen in a few weeks. That’s the kind of period we’re in right now. There are so many extraordinary, real-world events: the U.S. presidential election cycle, Brexit, the rise of terrorism, the increasing pace of technological change. A period of accelerated change increases the need and the appetite for history that gives you context and tells stories about how we got here, where we’re heading and where we came from.

TV REAL: Tell us about the ways in which the channel is exploring different takes on history programming.
BENNETT: We’re the number one TV brand in the U.S., according to several measures. Therefore, we have a lot of permission as to how we go about having history in our content. American Pickers and Pawn Stars are franchises that import lots of stories that link objects to the past in an effortless way. On the other end of the spectrum is scripted. HISTORY is a wonderful platform for male-skewed drama, while so much of broadcast and cable have more female-leaning scripted. Vikings is still going strong—it’s in the top ten of U.S. cable drama series, and has amazing story lines coming up, based and rooted in the actual journeys the Vikings took. I also wanted to open up the channel to more recent history as well. SIX is drawn from SEAL Team Six missions of the last 15 years. SIX gets us into the heart of more recent historical events. It is also a way of showing that history is so relevant to understanding the world as it is and as it’s becoming. We did a successful miniseries called D.B. Cooper: Case Closed? about a notorious hijacker. That cracked open a present-day investigation and found out a lot of new things. We’ve done other investigations in the contemporary space. Hunting Hitler used files that are only now being opened up to the public inside the FBI. The Rise and Fall of El Chapo was much more in the contemporary space. We’ve got different ways of opening up the doors to a more contemporary world while also embracing the ancient world and everything in between. Knightfall goes back 1,000 years and tells the story of the mysterious Knights Templar, who were born out of the Crusades and ended up having control of the world’s biggest bank. It’s very much about power politics and religious schisms and religious fundamentalism. That has Jeremy Renner as our exec producer.

TV REAL: When I’m watching fact-based dramas I’ll often go online and research the event or the key figures in question. What kinds of supplementary materials can you offer viewers when delivering drama based on real-life events?
BENNETT: It’s a different version of what people talk about as a two-screen experience. I do it sometimes after a program—I find myself asking questions like, Did that person really exist? What really happened? There’s an extra element of satisfaction when you find out that the program-makers have taken the time and the trouble to translate the facts into some great piece of story, whether it’s scripted or unscripted. So [off-screen engagement is] really important for us. We have several ways of trying to give that enhanced experience. One is companion documentaries. For example, we’re doing a doc about the real stories of the Vikings for the next season. We’re also doing one on the real stories of the Navy SEALs as a companion set of docs for SIX. We also have History.com as a well-trafficked property in its own right, and short-form content. For example, the short-form pieces from Roots have been nominated for an Emmy, which I’m really proud of. That was very much doing a supporting role in giving more facts, context and some of the social history around the original Roots and how much it impacted the cultural conversation in this country at the time. It was a wonderful complement to the scripted miniseries. I would call those multiplatform ideas: they can be on Facebook or on our website and on our air as short form. I’m happy to have short-form content on linear TV. It’s something we pioneered here on different channels. We find that there is a relatively easy acceptance of those as ad-supported content as well.