For the Factual Genre report in the latest issue of Televisual, we spoke with Alisa Pomeroy, Head of Documentaries & Factual Entertainment, Channel 4.
With Channel 4 being one of the biggest factual customers in the UK and one of the broadcasters to be worst hit by the downturn, the repercussions have been keenly felt.
According to research from Ampere Analysis, the period between September 2023 and August 2024, Unscripted commissions in the UK saw a decrease among all top 10 commissioners when compared to the 12 months prior. Channel 4 had a 34% fall in unscripted commissions. Documentary was down by 43%.
But Channel 4 says it’s still firmly back in the game. “Even though we’ve had a tricky time recently, it has been a good year for documentaries on the channel,” insists Alisa Pomeroy, the channel’s head of Documentaries and Factual Entertainment. “People should be encouraged that documentaries are important, our appetite for factual and for documentary is huge.
Merseyside Detectives that released earlier this year, “has done phenomenally well in on streaming, got a million per episode in the first seven days, which is huge. We had four episodes, but nearly everyone watched through to the end of the fourth so if you get it right, it can be brilliant.”
Pomeroy had factual entertainment added to her documentaries responsibility earlier this year, at the same time that Channel 4 declared an increased focus on streaming. She explains how the union of the two factual genres makes sense. “Take immigration and asylum seekers, and what’s going on in this country.” She references social experiment format Go Back to Where you Came From, being made by Minnow Films. But also, a documentary feature about this Summer’s race riots in the UK, from Leaving Neverland filmmaker Dan Reed. “Merging fact ent and docs allows us to take really important subject matters and treat them in different ways for different audiences,” she says.
When looking at the shrinking middle ground for factual production opportunities. Pomeroy, with digital on her mind, would rather pose the question, “Is this subject – in the style that I’m proposing we do it in – equally served on TikTok?” If social media can do a better job, then it’s not a C4 long-form proposition. “Where documentary used to be your window onto the world, that itch for voyeurism is now scratched by social media and other means…They [the audience] come to us because we are brilliant at long-form storytelling and getting access that other people can’t get.”
And for the acid test of a documentary idea? Alisa Pomeroy suggests “a really good question for people in development teams to to ask themselves is, ‘would I turn over? Would I decide to not watch a brilliant drama in order to turn on to Channel Four and watch this documentary?’”
Commissioning brief: Alisa Pomeroy
What’s been working well?
Some of our best performing titles of the last year have been documentaries: To Catch a Copper, Merseyside Detectives, The Fall: skydive murder plot, Miriam Death of Reality Star. These are all brand new, documentary, premium series, limited series. The Jury: Murder Trial, a constructed factual play, also did brilliantly for us.
We’ve got lots more in the pipeline, we’re developing a lot at the moment, so I think the opportunities are as abundant as they’ve ever been.What are you looking for?
I’m looking for premium documentary series, but I’m also looking for some precinct-based access series. Top Guns: Inside the RAF, has done well for us and we’re doing another series of To Catch a Copper, a traditional access series where we got access to the professional standards unit of Avon and Somerset Police. So, they can be deep access observational series, or they can be retrospective stories.And then we’re looking for really big, noisy, spiky singles that will pierce through the schedule and get noticed.
The pipeline is slightly emptier than it used to be because of the hiatus…So it would be call to arms to come to us, we’re back in business.
To find out more, including commissioner updates from the BBC and Channel 5, see Televisual’s Autumn issue, out this week.
Pippa Considine
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