This is part one of a two-part series focusing on emerging trends in documentary program distribution. Read part two here.
Introduction
Documentary content has long been a staple of culture and entertainment in the United States, but emerging technologies are changing the way this programming is consumed. This includes the content distribution mechanisms, including broadcast, cable, premium cable, advertisement-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) and subscription-based video-on-demand (SVOD). Emerging Trends in Documentary Program Distribution focuses on understanding the current market for documentary programs and the current best practices to sell, distribute, and market documentary content. This research article is presented in two parts. The first lays out an overview of the documentary market and then moves into an analysis of how the consumption of video content has changed due to emerging technologies.
Part two of this research analyzes data and information collected through an audience survey and one-on-one interviews. This original research will be used in connection with the broader contextual research to provide recommendations for documentary film makers on the best paths for taking their work to the market.
The Documentary Landscape
Documentary films and television programs have long been a staple of American culture and entertainment. The genre has evolved from its earlier historic forms of “actuality” shorts and avant-garde silent films into an expansive genre of widely consumed and commercially successful films, television shows, mini-series and shorts. In recent years, the documentary landscape has shifted dramatically. Past audiences primarily consumed documentary programming theatrically as well as on traditional broadcast networks such as PBS; cable channels like National Geographic and the History Channel; and premium cable channels including HBO and Showtime. The introduction and subsequent rise of Netflix and other subscription-based video-on-demand (SVOD) platforms, advertising-based video-on-demand (AVOD) platforms like YouTube and Facebook Watch, and over-the-top (OTT) media services have significantly increased content availability across all genres, including documentaries. Despite this increased availability, data and information on audience preferences tend to be controlled by specialists like agents and distributors who limit access for strategic business reasons. As a result, many content producers do not know specifically what audiences want to see.
Broadcast and cable networks are easy to evaluate since reports on audience viewership ratings are publicly available. For example, the eight-part Ken Burns documentary series “Country Music” (2019) averaged 6.8 million viewers per episode over the course of its two-week run on PBS, which may indicate a general audience demand for music docuseries that provide a cultural and historical perspective.
In contrast, data detailing potential audience demand for docuseries content on SVOD and OTT platforms is often limited. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon do not routinely share ratings as they see viewership data as proprietary information. However, these platforms currently offer a significant share of original docuseries content that have resonated with audiences, including Netflix’s “Making A Murderer” (2019) and the recent YouTube Premium Justin Bieber docuseries, “Justin Bieber: Seasons” (2020). Additionally, these platforms continue to announce orders for new docuseries content, such as the forthcoming Netflix series “Living Undocumented,” and an untitled Rihanna documentary from Amazon. (“Living Undocumented” has since been released on Netflix after this research was compiled.) This steady stream of docuseries content indicates strong audience demand.
Docuseries Distribution Channels
The documentary series format has long been a staple of entertainment, but the rise of alternative platforms has dramatically changed the docuseries landscape. To find the best platform for content distribution, it is important to look into each type of distribution channel to best understand their advantages and disadvantages, as well as evaluate how they are adapting to the changing marketplace.
Broadcast
Despite the changing media environment, broadcast television networks are a player in the current marketplace with huge audience reach and impact on advertising revenues. The revenue in the U.S. broadcasting industry has increased from $89.56 billion in 2005 to $168.64 billion in 2018. Although broadcast is traditionally not a home for documentary content, PBS is the exception to the rule. Documentarian Ken Burns has produced several successful PBS docuseries including his most recent series, “Country Music” (2019). Martin Scorsese’s 2003 documentary film series “The Blues” is another leading example. Outside of PBS programming, broadcast television does not typically program documentary content, because the reality television format has taken the place of once-occasional network and non-fiction event specials.
Cable
Cable television networks are a formative player in the documentary content marketplace. Major cable networks including National Geographic have historically offered ample documentary programming with successful programs including “Drugs, Inc.” (2010) and “The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman” (2017). The Discovery Channel was once home to similar docuseries content, including the acclaimed BBC co-production “Planet Earth” (2010) and its related spin-off shows. However, it has recently found success with reality television programs including “Naked and Afraid” (2013), which was in its eleventh season in 2020.
In the last few years, other cable networks have begun to embrace the documentary format. Lifetime, a channel mostly known for reality programming and syndicated dramas, has found success with the Emmy-nominated docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly” (2019). The six-part docuseries, which revealed details of the Grammy-winning artist’s history of sexual abuse and violence against women, drew an estimated 26 million viewers.
Another key example is the 24-hour news network CNN. In 2018, their film division, CNN Films, released two original documentaries—”RBG” and “Three Identical Strangers”—which earned $14 million and $12 million, respectively, at the box office. In addition to their theatrical success, CNN’s films received a combined nine Primetime Emmy nominations in 2019 for the original documentaries “RBG,” “Three Identical Strangers,” and “Love, Gilda” (2018). According to CNN Films Vice President Courtney Sexton, when the company makes documentaries, it considers how a particular film will work both on CNN as well as on other platforms. In 2017, CNN Films and CNN Originals partnered with SVOD platform Hulu for streaming distribution. Since then, CNN Films has continued to license its films exclusively to Hulu for streaming. With the potential for multiple revenue streams, it is easy to see why CNN must consider how a film will play across multiple viewing platforms. Selecting films that work in theaters, on cable, and streaming on demand is vital to maximize all revenue streams.
Compared to audiences for other platforms, cable viewers mostly fall into older age ranges, with smaller audiences per channel than SVOD platforms, where most younger generations consume content. According to Nielsen’s Digital Content Ratings, among live TV viewers above the age of 13, 59% of people are in the 55+ group, while only 5% are aged 13-24. The median age of a live TV viewer is 56. It is important to note that pay TV subscriptions have been steadily declining for the last five years, with a decrease of 16.7 million households from 2015 to 2020. This increase in “cord-cutting” behavior is a major concern for content producers and cable television executives alike. As cable continues to steadily lose subscribers year after year, advertising revenue will also decrease, leading to lower licensing and acquisition rates across the board for content that does not draw large viewership numbers.
Figure 2: Chart showing TV network audience age composition. Source: Marketing Charts.
Premium Cable
Premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime have historically been known for their broadcasts of theatrical films, prestige scripted shows, and special sporting events. However, these premium cable channels retain their significance in the documentary content marketplace. HBO has been a long-time player in the documentary space, known for classic documentary films and series including “When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” (2006), “Maxima Mea Culpa” (2012), and “Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways” (2014). One chief concern is that the fewer channels on premium cable lead to fewer distribution opportunities compared to cable and SVOD. However, these premium cable channels have been adaptable to the changes in the marketplace. As the historic premiere distributor of original documentaries, HBO is known to take business risks; it established HBO Go, a streaming service that required a cable subscription to the HBO channel. HBO Now was later launched in 2015 for TV consumers who had “cut the cable cord,” and its subscribers reached five million within three years. Showtime is also now available as a subscription add-on channel to many streaming services, including Hulu and Amazon Prime Video. Participating in the streaming platform model while also retaining space on traditional television has helped to keep these premium cable networks relevant in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
AVOD
With the crowded media landscape, AVOD is another distribution model emerging in the entertainment business. AVOD offers audiences a more cost-efficient alternative compared to its SVOD counterpart by offering either free or discounted access to platforms by subsidizing costs with advertising. However, it is important to note that platforms make less money through ads on AVOD than other OTT platforms. While documentary content is limited on some AVOD platforms, including Facebook Watch, others are embracing the documentary format. Hulu and YouTube Premium have both ramped up their documentary content production and have released popular programming including “Fyre Fraud” (2019) and “Justin Bieber: Seasons” (2020), respectively. Neither platform, however, offers a large documentary content library like those found on Netflix or HBO. The lack of this content on AVOD platforms could be an opportunity for filmmakers to fill a potential gap in programming.
SVOD
SVOD platforms are a relatively new player in the documentary content marketplace compared to extant broadcast and cable networks. The rise of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime as creative content powerhouses has contributed to a significant disruption in the documentary marketplace with both positive and negative effects. These platforms are producing and acquiring large quantities of new documentary films and docuseries at rapid rates in order to feed growing audience demand.
In a presentation given at the 2019 Sunny Side of the Doc Conference, Netflix programming executive Diego Buñuel stated that “Two-thirds of [Netflix’s] four-hundred million viewers have watched at least one original documentary.” Another indicator of strong audience demand is the continued announcement of original and acquired documentary content from multiple streaming services. Documentary announcements over the last six months from SVOD platforms include an Ava Duvernay-directed feature on rapper Nipsey Hussle that Netflix bought for a reportedly high eight figures as well as a currently untitled documentary feature on Billie Eilish, purchased by AppleTV+ for $25 million.
“Two-thirds of [Netflix’s] four-hundred million viewers have watched at least one original documentary”
Additionally, these SVOD companies have purchased a combined total of seven documentary film titles from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. This addition of creative opportunities and revenue streams has been beneficial for documentarians, many of whom view online opportunities as a promising vehicle for distribution. Out of these online opportunities, Netflix currently stands as the leader in spending, with a projected $15 billion budgeted for content in 2019.
Despite this seemingly positive situation for consumers and documentary filmmakers, however, there are a growing number of concerns. While the subjects of certain films and series may spark bidding wars that result in million-dollar deals, many documentarians do not experience this kind of financial windfall. The overall state of documentary sales to SVOD platforms is difficult to fully ascertain, as many of these platforms withhold sales figures as proprietary information. The largest documentary sale from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival was “Boys State” (2020) to Apple for streaming and to A24 for theatrical release at $12 million. Studio executives have claimed that “Two or three years ago, companies like Netflix were paying $1 million [to acquire] documentaries. Now they’re at festivals offering $100,000.”
Further complicating the financial picture for filmmakers is the forced increase in documentary production budgets. The genre’s popularity has pressed filmmakers to produce higher quality films and series that can stand out amid a competitive market. Thalia Mavros, founder of documentary production studio The Front, shared that producing a documentary film “used to be a $200,000 to $300,000 proposition. Now you need $1 million to provide something competitive.”
Insight into Netflix’s documentary strategy offers a similarly restrictive perspective. Internal directives are centered on distributing content “created by A-list creatives or involving A-listers or celebrities as subjects.” Recent Netflix Original documentaries and docuseries serve as a clear testament to this strategy: “Miss Americana” (2020) starring Taylor Swift, Higher Grounds Productions’ “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution” (2020), and the Blumhouse feature “A Secret Love” (2020) produced by Ryan Murphy all fit the above strategy. Other SVODs also seem to follow this strategy when making programming decisions. Hulu’s latest docuseries, “Hillary” (2020), features the life story of former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and follows her 2016 campaign for president of the United States in close, intimate detail. Disney+ has also employed this celebrity strategy in recent months; its nature documentary “Elephants” (2020) received significant attention from the press as it was narrated by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
Notable exceptions to this rule seem to be documentary films and docuseries content that fall into the true-crime subgenre. The most popular docuseries as of April 2020 is Netflix’s true crime hit “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness” (2020). It is notable that “Tiger King” wasn’t produced by an A-lister and is not centered on a major celebrity, and yet has become a viral success. By focusing solely on documentary content that will spark controversy, draw built-in fan bases, or garner self-generated press coverage, SVOD distributors that employ these strategies often enhance their own chances of success.
Even if documentary filmmakers can sell worldwide rights for their project to an SVOD company, they often aren’t guaranteed that their project will be marketed to its target audience. While Netflix in particular does not seem to have any trouble marketing its projects with massive stars and high production price tags, such as “Bright” (2017) starring Will Smith or the Brad Pitt film “War Machine” (2017), it typically does not commit to a dollar-specific marketing amount for its original shows and films. Netflix’s internal definition of what constitutes a marketing campaign is similarly ambiguous. In a recent publication, an anonymous source stated that “Since they consider placement on the various iterations of the interface ‘marketing,’ they can tell you they’ve fulfilled their contract to you just by making sure [your show] is recommended to women between 18 to 34 who watched ‘Sex and the City’ on the Android app phone version.” While these “marketing tactics” may be somewhat beneficial, there is no concrete way for producers to ascertain the effectiveness of Netflix’s marketing strategy since the company continues to withhold most streaming data from its content producers as well as the public.
Conclusion
The advent of different distribution platforms—such as AVOD and SVOD—for documentary content distribution has altered the way documentarians approach production and the sale of their work. Because the details about documentary and docuseries popularity on many of these platforms are hidden, however, documentarians face difficulty in determining what, exactly, these platforms are looking for. The next part of this series will analyze data and information collected through an audience survey and one-on-one interviews in connection with the broader contextual research to provide recommendations for documentary film makers on how to make their work attractive to the market.
About the Authors
This analysis was part of a capstone project by Carnegie Mellon Master of Entertainment Industry Management students Sasly Ma, Mariel Nardi, Mohammed Mandraswala, and Manuel Vallarino.
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