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ATF Online + 2020: documentaries in focus
The session "Buyers Speak: Hot Docs" held during the last day of ATF Online + was focused on market opportunities for realities and documentaries, a genre that has recently stood out in OTT and that the most established players such as Discovery, which has just launched discovery+ and con-tinue to position as one of the most demanded.Ishaan Misra, Executive, Content Strategy & Acquisitions at Discovery Inc., explained: 'I think this year the documentary and factual genre experienced a revival. Among so many information and news, players like Discovery play a leading role in this type of content. In APAC, the markets where the documentary genre has worked best for us have been Japan and India; audiences in these territories have a tremendous appetite for the content we acquire, produce and distribute on the shelf and on OTTs’.
In the same panel, Julian Chou-Lambert, Acquisitions Manager at TVF International (UK), added: 'We are experiencing a growing demand for documentary and factual content this year; Not only because the production of fiction series was stopped, but because during isolation, family groups needed meaningful content that could be consumed as a family. In this sense, there was a lot of interest in documentaries on science, history, animal life and travel. We started to see that the plat-forms demanded a lot of premium documentaries, so it will be a trend that will continue in the com-ing years’.
Last but not least, Shaun Levin, Chairman at Switch International (Australia), concluded: 'Australia is one of the most competitive markets for the documentary genre, there are many outlets that distribute the genre; so we have opted for original production in alliance with local and international produc-ers. Documentaries on architecture from regions of Africa and Europe have recently performed very well’.