Documentary TV in Today’s Media Markets.

By Lance Miccio 2009

The Documentary TV program and the documentary feature remains a growing industry.
This years most talked about films include documentaries like “Waltz with Bashir “by Ari Forlman, tells the animated rediscovery of the war in Beirut in 1982 and James Marsh’s “Man on Wire “ about Phillippe Petit the Frenchman who walked on wire between The World Trade Centers in August 1974. Both have been garnished with DGA, WGA, Golden Globe and Academy nominations. Rightfully the accolades are well deserved, but unlike their big budget brothers and sisters nominated in the feature category these documentaries are profitable.

Finding a Niches

The Niches documentary be it TV, or feature documentary film is a force to be recognized. Documentaries are relatively less expensive than what feature films cost. Not to spare the obvious the less a program costs the easier it is to recoup the investment and garnish a profit.. Today there are many venues for which to release a Documentary – Cable networks and Film Production companies alike have established their own festivals to screen and review and mine new documentaries. Some examples are SILVERDOC - AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival and Sundance.

The Documentary episodic programs also appear to be a favorite of channels like PBS that have aired the American Experience and Ken Burns documentary series The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz and The War to some of the highest ratings in Public Broadcasting.
Another example is Fox’s COPS the long running multi Emmy award winning show created by John Langley in his Cinema verities style. Many of the Big Networks have recently dedicated a single branch to documentaries, like HBO who recently formed The HBO Documentary Channel.

Not Your Father’s Documentary

Today’s documentary is a new animal. Some are grass roots projects with a message, some are expose’s of subjects hidden in the shadows. Like the 2007 Sundance winner “Manda Bala “ (send a bullet) The tag line reflects the subject matter “When the Rich Steal from the Poor ,The Poor Steal the Rich”. Still others are reflective animated nightmares like “Waltz with Bashir” rediscovering truth of the Massacre in Beirut or one man’s search for a Bio friendly alternative fuel source in “FUEL”. Visual awe and beauty is found in Werner Herzog’s visual trek across Antarctica in “Encounters at the End of the Earth “. All are unique . To our benifit these films help us grow as people in the understanding of a world outside our own.

Educate, enlighten and do it for under a 100 Grand is the common goal. If you win some Oscars along the way, so be it . The growth of documentary film can be seen in some of the examples listed below.

The New School’s recently added “New School Documentary Studies Program”. The Sundance documentary institute is now a reality and Documentary @American University in Washington D.C. will teach documentary filmmaking.

[Ida] International Documentary Association has grown to recent prosperity. [ida] supports documentary filmmakers on every level; they supply grants, venues, insurance distribution and supply publicity and advertising in the bargain.

My recent trip to the National Association of Television Production Executives only reinforced my belief that the episodic documentaries and documentary features are still a good ticket item for multiple platforms.

Re inventing the Wheel was not the goal when MTV introduced Reality TV in the form of The ”Real Life”, but thats what it did. The show documented the lives of different youth from different backgrounds and forced and them to live in the lap of luxury where they imploded one by one before our very eyes.

New Documentary media approaches
Reality vs. Actuality

“Reality TV” as strong as it is, faces a new threat “Actuality TV“. The Actual recorded events in the most desperate situations, Police Shoot outs, Car Chases, Combat, Natural disasters are the new hot ticket item. No scripts needed just action in today’s newest episodic documentary sensation. The delivery source is no longer production teams delivering a show. The show comes in direct from the source, a Police Dashboard or Security camera combined with “YouTube” as the new stock library .It comes straight into your living room, office or on your phone. The fact is that Actuality TV and the soft core Reality TV program should be considered an episodic documentary in the loosest form, but still a documentary none the less.

Regardless of what you call it and how it’s delivered, the episodic documentary remains a powerful, cost effective product that has a long shelf life and a great chance of reaching many platforms for distribution … thus achieving profitability