{"id":14403,"date":"2020-04-15T09:00:15","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T13:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/tvreal\/"},"modified":"2020-04-16T15:48:55","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T19:48:55","slug":"national-geographics-courteney-monroe-2020-04","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/national-geographics-courteney-monroe-2020-04\/","title":{"rendered":"National Geographic\u2019s Courteney Monroe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courteney Monroe, president of National Geographic Global Television Networks, talks to <\/em>TV Real\u00a0about the transition to Disney ownership, platform-agnostic storytelling and the Field Ready Program to promote diversity in the natural-history-filmmaking sector.<\/em><\/p>\n

Monroe has led a complete transformation of the National Geographic television networks since taking on oversight of the portfolio. She placed a focus on premium factual, restarted the business\u2019s theatrical documentary segment, led a drive into high-end scripted and sealed a range of partnerships with top creatives, including Imagine Entertainment\u2019s Ron Howard and Brian Grazer and the filmmaking duo of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, whose Free Solo<\/em> won the Academy Award for best documentary last year.<\/p>\n

\"***Image***\"TV REAL:<\/strong> Tell us about the integration into Disney, and what new ownership has meant for your portfolio.
\nMONROE:<\/strong> Being part of The Walt Disney Company is a massive opportunity for the National Geographic brand. Not just for the television and doc film business that I oversee, but for the span of the enterprise in terms of our travel and consumer-products businesses. Disney leadership from the very top levels is incredibly engaged with, enthusiastic about and supportive of our brand, business and strategy. It has meant zero change to our programming strategy. In fact, I am grateful that we pivoted to the pre\u00admium strategy when we did because it prepared us to join The Walt Disney Company and for this massive shift in the marketplace that is direct-to-consumer. We are one of five brands on Disney+. Being one of those five brands\u2014and the only one that came over from the Fox transaction\u2014is such a tremendous opportunity for us to expand our programming slate and expand to new audiences.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong> What is your short-form doc strategy? How do you determine what would play better as a short-form series versus a longer-form series?
\nMONROE:<\/strong> We\u2019re doing what we do best, which is to be creativity driven and idea driven. The lion\u2019s share of the content we will be making is long form. But last year, we acquired two short-form doc series, The Nightcrawlers <\/em>and Lost and Found<\/em>, both of which made it onto the festival circuit\u2014and The Nightcrawlers<\/em> made the Oscar shortlist! They were stories, visions and voices we wanted to support. #impact<\/em>, the Gal Gadot series that we announced recently, was initially pitched to us as a long-form series. But upon screening some tape, we just felt that the stories would be tighter and more compelling as short form. All of the creative people involved agreed. It\u2019s not like we were looking for a short-form series to create. We just loved the idea of being able to showcase these incredible young women, who have overcome unbelievable odds, not just on linear, which is why we\u2019ll be launching #impact<\/em> as digital shorts, culminating in an hour-long special on the channel. We certainly have distribution platforms for short form if we feel the stories lend themselves to that. We have our own digital platforms: we\u2019re the number one brand on Instagram\u2014we have a massive footprint in social media. And Disney+ is making short form as well. If the content lends itself to a more traditional long-form storytelling, then we\u2019ll do that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong> Having all these different sandboxes to play in must be so much fun for your programming teams and the creatives you work with.
\nMONROE:<\/strong> It\u2019s really fun. Our number one priority is to create compelling, high-quality, distinctive storytelling that lives up to the expectations of the National Geographic brand. And not having a formula around format or platform is very liberating to our creative teams, and it makes for incredibly collaborative conversations with filmmakers, producers, showrunners and writers. We can say to them, \u201cLet\u2019s figure out what is going to be the most successful version of this story, and on what platform is this story most going to thrive?\u201d That\u2019s a good way to run a creative business! Sometimes you can\u2019t do that. If the only space you\u2019re in is ad-supported cable television, you\u2019re going to say no to a lot of things that don\u2019t make sense for that platform. We can say, \u201cThis a great ad-supported show for cable television, advertisers will love it, we can do brand and product integration.\u201d Or, \u201cThis is a show that would be such a great subscription acquisition vehicle for direct to consumer.\u201d Or, \u201cThis is about impact, so let\u2019s just get it out, unauthenticated, across all our digital platforms so as many people can see it as possible.\u201d Those are the conversations we have once we fall in love with an idea or a storyteller.<\/p>\n

TV REAL: <\/strong>You\u2019ve had a ton of success with your reinvigorated feature film doc division. What are your continued plans for that segment?
\nMONROE:<\/strong> I\u2019m so proud of what we\u2019ve been able to achieve in just the past three years with our National Geographic Documentary Films banner. We created it as we were pivoting our overall programming strategy, with the goal of assuming the mantle of leadership in documentary filmmaking. I felt strongly that this was a space National Geographic should occupy. What we\u2019ve accomplished, starting with record-breaking global viewership of Before the Flood<\/em> with Leonardo DiCaprio, all the way to our second consecutive Oscar nomination this year for The Cave<\/em> and the critical and box-office success of our Oscar winner Free Solo<\/em>, has been pretty extraordinary. We have an unbelievable pipeline of films in development or production, including Rebuilding Paradise<\/em>, directed by Ron Howard, and our recent acquisition out of Sundance, the critically acclaimed Saudi Runaway<\/em>. When you have success, it becomes a great beacon for storytellers who want to bring their best projects to you. And we\u2019re being very curated and careful. There are others in this space, other streamers, for whom it\u2019s much more of a tonnage play. For us, it\u2019s not a tonnage play. We want to be able to give these projects our full attention and support. So when you do a feature doc with Nat Geo, you will know we are all in. We have the ability to get behind a filmmaker\u2019s vision, not just from a content-development and production perspective, but also from the perspective of distribution, awards and impact. It\u2019s probably the best proof point of our transformation and our success over the past couple of years.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong> How is the scripted strategy progressing?
\nMONROE:<\/strong> Scripted drama is not the lion\u2019s share of our content, but it\u2019s an important component, and it\u2019s been responsible for a lot of our awards attention, press and buzz. Not every scripted story is right for us. Any scripted drama that we decide to make has to be grounded in factual authenticity. We want to work with the best creative minds in the business, but the story has to be aligned with our brand.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re looking at expanding The Hot Zone<\/em>, the highest-rated scripted series in the history of our network, potentially into a recurring anthology series. Genius <\/em>is our critically acclaimed recurring anthology series from Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. We\u2019re very focused on our next installment on Aretha Franklin, but we\u2019re already thinking about what might be next. I\u2019m proud of The Right Stuff<\/em>, which we\u2019re producing with Warner Horizon and Leonardo DiCaprio\u2019s Appian Way. In success, that could be a returning series. It\u2019s based on the book by Tom Wolfe, not so much the movie, which chronicled the full history of NASA\u2019s space program. We have our first foray into historical fiction, based on Annie Proulx\u2019s book Barkskins<\/em>\u2014which could also be a recurring drama\u2014with Fox 21 Television Studios and Scott Rudin. It\u2019s not based on real people the way The Right Stuff<\/em> is, but it is very much grounded in historical accuracy. While we are in development on some other ideas, again, this is not a tonnage play for us; it\u2019s highly curated.<\/p>\n

TV REAL: <\/strong>Tell us about the Field Ready Program. How did it come about?
\nMONROE:<\/strong> Two junior executives on our natural history and wildlife programming team spotted a need during preproduction on Queens<\/em>, which is a natural-history series that we are working on with Wildstar Films profiling animal species that come from matriarch-driven societies. The entire production crew and the cinematographers will be women. In the process of our teams looking to staff up that production, they realized there is a dearth of female and diverse voices in wildlife and natural-history cinematography and production. It has very much been a white male-dominated creative community. National Geographic has always been a leader in the natural-history-filmmaking space. We should be at the forefront of promoting diversity in the pipeline of talent who can fill the ranks of every job: directors, cinematographers and production assistants. We\u2019re partnering with the National Geographic Society on the Field Ready Program, which is a mentorship and training program designed to clear a path for young, diverse talent interested in working behind the camera in natural-history production. We\u2019ve already reached out to many production companies to say, \u201cWe\u2019re going to invest in this, join forces with us, serve as mentors, and then we can connect and help network once this talent comes through the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong> I love what you\u2019ve done with Brain Games<\/em>. How are you maintaining that franchise and others?
\nMONROE:<\/strong> We\u2019re looking at lots of IP that we have in our arsenal and thinking about how we could reimagine and reformat some of these titles that resonated with audiences. Brain Games<\/em> is a perfect example. We take the heart and DNA of what audiences loved\u00ad and reimagine it and make it more entertaining and more talent driven. We\u2019re working with Magical Elves and the amazing Keegan-Michael Key in bringing celebrities to that format to increase the star wattage and the level of fun, but still maintain what made that show great, which is unlocking and understanding how our brains work.
\nWe\u2019re always looking to work with great talent. Running Wild with Bear Grylls<\/em>is a show that has run for a long time in other places. We\u2019ve taken that format and added some muscularity and a greater sense of adventure for the Nat Geo audience. We\u2019re working on the second season of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted<\/em>. Ramsay is an example of a talent who is well known, but is being presented in a completely different format than people are accustomed to seeing him in. We\u2019re working with Bertram van Munster and his talented team, who created and produced The Amazing Race<\/em>, on a new format called Race to the Center of the <\/em>Earth<\/em>. It\u2019s a global adventure competition format, but very different. It draws on classic National Geographic themes: exotic locations, breathtaking visuals and true feats of adventure. Developing our franchises means finding great talent, behind and in front of the camera, and evolving and finding new stories to tell with them that make sense for our brand.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong> What are some of the other programming highlights you\u2019re excited about?
\nMONROE:<\/strong> \u00a0I know I briefly mentioned it, but right now I am most excited for our next installment of Genius <\/em>which is [about] Aretha Franklin. It stars double Oscar-nominated actress Cynthia Erivo and the incredible Courtney B. Vance. I have seen an early cut of the first episode, and it floored me. Cynthia is so unbelievably talented I think she is going to just blow audiences way. I am also excited about our upcoming investigative series Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller<\/em>. Mariana is a Peabody Award-winning journalist. She has done specials for us in the past, but this is the first time she\u2019s headlining her own series. I love that we have a bad-ass female headlining a hardcore investigative series. Trafficked<\/em> embodies inside access, which National Geographic has long been known for. Our yellow border gets us access to people and places and organizations that many don\u2019t have access to. Mariana is fearless and she is looking at the underworld trafficking of goods and services that end up being more important to the global economy than traditional capitalist markets are. She\u2019s someone we\u2019re leaning into. She\u2019s homegrown talent for us. I think this is something that markets all around the world will be very interested in.<\/p>\n

This interview was conducted prior to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Media companies are currently shifting their strategies in the wake of production postponements and economic trends.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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