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Wholesome family snuff filmsTHIS month the Discovery Channel is treating American and European viewers to a frenzy of sharks. There are sharks munching on seals (filmed at 2,000 frames per second and slowed down to capture every bone-crunching detail), sharks attacking people and sharks chewing cameras. Discovery has been churning out shark programmes for 23 years. Yet ratings are sound. Nature sells.
Indeed, it is one of the best businesses in media. Discovery Communications, which also owns Animal Planet, TLC and a few smaller channels, made a profit of $372m in the second quarter of this year. That is about as much as the film studios of Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros put together. Its growth appears not to have been affected by the arrival of another channel, Nat Geo Wild, owned by National Geographic and News Corporation.
American pay-television is a reliable racket in general, thanks to the fees distributors pay for content. What makes natural history unusual is that it travels well. Between 70% and 80% of Discovery Channel’s programmes are dispatched abroad. Nat Geo Wild is a rare example of a network that was developed abroad and imported to America. “A zebra is a zebra, whether you’re an Argentine or a Japanese,” says David Haslingden, who runs National Geographic’s channels.
Not everything works well. Pet shows struggle outside America: not everybody loves manicured poodles. Conventional nature documentaries fare better, but what really sells is peril. “Pit a human being against a predator whose jaws, claws and brute strength can kill in an instant, and the outcome is going to be bad for the human.” So reads the description of one Animal Planet show. Another, successful, programme is “River Monsters”, which features a man in demented pursuit of some of the world’s gnarliest fish. In another series, activists go up against whaling ships.
Marjorie Kaplan, who has steered Animal Planet in this direction, says the “hands-on-hips” documentary presenter is out of style. Viewers want to watch people having adventures in the natural world. She is competing for viewers not just against other animal shows but against all dramatic television. Another advantage of people as subjects in nature programmes is that they are biddable. A nature channel needs to balance the unpredictable, costly business of filming wild animals with more dependable fare.
Sport and films fuelled the growth of cable and satellite television in the early 1980s. They did a fine job in convincing people to part with money each month: more than 85% of American households with televisions pay for the stuff. But those viewers may be nearing the limit of what they are prepared to pay. The best prospects for growth now lie in places like Brazil, India and eastern Europe, where pay-TV is still growing. And the fattest profits will be made by those who can repackage content for multiple markets. Nature programmes are likely to become even more important to media firms.
It helps that natural history looks good in high-definition and in three dimensions.
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