PART 1: Challenges
COBY ATLAS, CO-CHIEF PROGRAMMING EXECUTIVE AT PBS, TOLD US, “THERE ARE FEWER VENUES FOR SERIOUS SOCIAL ISSUE MEDIA DOCS....IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN DIFFICULT AND THE SERIOUS AUDIENCE HAS ALWAYS BEEN RELATIVELY SMALL...…but now it is more difficult to get even that small audience’s attention. There are lots of new venues for passionate indies with a sharp point of view and whose reporting may not be as thorough as possible. Because so much advocacy work is being produced, that’s making it harder [for serious social issue media documentaries] to gain the public’s trust.”
Anyone affiliated with the field of social issue media is familiar with at least some of the challenges faced by producers, distributors, broadcasters and underwriters: broadcasters are giving less prime-time placement; fewer underwriters are offering support; producers are producing fewer of these programs; viewers are watching less; and the social impact of the few relevant social issue media documentaries that make it over these hurdles is seen by many to be negligible. This diminution is happening at a time when partisan documentaries and theatrically released documentaries are receiving unprecedented attention and are perceived to be commercially successful an era that Hollywood Reporter has described as a “documentary renaissance.”
Audience Fragmentation
In 2005, CBS announced that its season finale for the situation comedy “Everybody Loves Raymond” was a Monday night record breaker for the year. With 33 million viewers, it attracted the highest ratings the network earned that year.
But as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, in the late 1960s, CBS’s sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies” routinely drew 60 million viewers. In the late 1960s, viewers didn’t have many alternatives to the three major networks. Today, alternatives abound.
The story of the fragmentation of the media marketplace (and the niche clustering of audiences) has been well documented by many recent reports and articles. Suffice it to say that we are consuming an unprecedented amount of media and are doing so out of synch with what our family, neighbors and larger community are consuming. A recent report from Nielsen Media Research pointed out that Americans now spend more time in front of a television set than ever before. Today the average American spends more time using media devices – television, radio, iPods, and cell phones – than performing any other wakeful activity, according to a report from Ball State University. And with increases in broadband access and wireless video transmission and new storage technologies, people will be “swimming in an ocean of media,” as one commentator noted. The advent of Internet television (ITV) will increase that fragmentation. According to David Koenig, the founder of an ITV company, International Television Networks, “I can do everything a cable company can do, but I will have 100,000 channels.” The number of choices means that the individual consumer can find programming that suits his or her very specific interests at any time of day or night. It also means that people are rarely watching the same program as their friends, families and colleagues – and even more rarely, at the same time. Getting the attention of the American public has become remarkably difficult. Sally Jo Feiffer, of ITVS, told us, “With so much media out there, it’s like throwing confetti in the Grand Canyon.” The two things that work with some success – shrillness or big marketing budgets – are not available to producers of thoughtful social issue media.
In addition to the plethora of programming choices, consumers increasingly are “time shifting.” By using digital recorders such as TiVo and Comcast DR, viewers can ignore schedules and record and watch programs whenever they choose. The software program “Bit-Torrent” is now commonly used to download television programs onto computers (usually, illegally). This shift from a “push” model of broadcasting to a “pull” model will only contribute to the fragmentation of the viewing public. In 2006, the FCC reports that there are 530 national satellite-deliverable cable networks. That is an increase from 188 networks just one year ago.
Commercial pressure to make advertising much more efficient is a key force driving fragmentation, and virtually no media broadcaster has a long-term plan for capturing national audiences on anything other than a “spectacle” or event basis. Programming can be developed and delivered for specific demographic groups making the cost/benefit ratio much healthier for narrow, clearly defined audiences. As an advertiser, if you want to promote your client’s new fishing tool, it is best to advertise to people who fish rather than to the general public. As one media market researcher noted, “Fragmentation can be a challenge, but if you have a very niche brand, it can be a blessing.”
While it has never been easy for social issue documentaries to reach a wide and diverse audience, it was possible to create a buzz and get the public’s attention when there was less media competition. This is no longer the case, and it is unrealistic to believe that the media world’s fragmentation is going to reverse itself. Rather, social issue media producers must adapt to the changing conditions of the marketplace. While the broadcast component of a project must serve as the jumping off point for any nonbroadcast uses, it is now crucial that social issue documentary producers build other possible uses into projects from the outset. Llew Smith, a producer on “Race: The Power of an Illusion,” told us that during and after the broadcast numerous people told him how much they liked the project. “When I asked them when they saw the doc, not a one saw it on television. They saw it at group screenings, in classrooms, on DVD, but not on television.” Llew Smith’s experience is likely to become more common as media migrates from a single broadcast format to multiple platforms.
With the help of distributors, funders, and broadcasters, members of the social issue media community could use all available tools to weave together this time-shifting, ideologically partitioned marketplace. The tools at hand include satellite technology, the Internet, digital video recording, digital terrestrial television and broadcast, all of which may be used strategically to recreate a public sphere in which media sparks community-wide deliberation. Admittedly, this is asking a lot from people who are struggling to survive. It is the contention of the authors that such a concerted effort cannot begin until key stakeholders establish shared values and common measures of success (see recommendations below), as well as systems, bodies and institutions to facilitate and manage this transition from analog to digital.
New Technologies and Reduced Barriers to Entry
All of the problems confronting the viability of social issue media are interconnected, and all are tied most closely to changes in media technology. Along with new, low-cost methods of distribution (referenced above) we are seeing new, low-cost methods of production. ITVS’s Sally Jo Feiffer told us, “New technology means that the quality of programs and the production values are improving. There’s more of a variety of styles now. Low-cost HD cameras mean that the quality is beautiful. That low cost also means that now, everybody is a media producer.” Robert Silvestri of the Environmental Media Fund put it this way: “Everybody I know with $5000 and a camera is a filmmaker.” For those who are skeptical of the value of gatekeepers or the need for professional balance being presented to the broadest segment of the public, this explosion of blogs, vlogs, Web movies and cell phone/PDA/iPod videos holds the promise of renewed democracy. There is no doubt that much innovation and many interesting formats and programming approaches will arise from this abundance of technology and that citizens and groups that have never before had access to the media will find a voice. It is also clear that those new voices will rarely be heard beyond the current believers.
Additionally, amateurs producing documentaries using their digital video cameras and their credit cards (or producing a theatrical documentary for as little as $295) pose a competitive threat to veterans in the field, and they are diminishing the ability of long-standing producers to secure professional-level funding. Coby Atlas, of PBS, notes, “Serious thoughtful work like ‘Eyes on the Prize’ or ‘Rx for Survival’ can’t be done by a one-man band – a person with a digital camera and a blog.” Moreover, the increased number of good, bad and middling documentaries will further distract the public’s limited attention from rigorously researched, thoughtful, well-produced work. As a reporter for the New York Times noted,
Perhaps these are the realities to which veterans in the industry must adjust (or perhaps the exodus of professionals will continue and a new breed of filmmakers with a different set of values, standards and goals will rise). In referencing the radical changes occurring in the media industry, Fortune magazine pointed out that “Paradigm shifts are rarely kind to incumbents.” It is not certain that quality counts for nearly as much as many professionals like to think. An abundance of low-budget producers churning out limitless media product, combined with an audience not obviously drawn to quality, may well be proof of what Fortune contends.
Reduced barriers to entry mean that there is more competition for veteran social issue media producers: competition for funding, for distribution, for audience and for impact. While production costs have come down for the technical components of media production, the key labor costs have not. As Cara Mertes of American Documentary told us, “Making serious, thoughtful documentaries is still labor-intensive work. Some production costs have come down substantially, but the time it takes to research, deliberate and craft a good film has not come down.”
Many veteran documentary producers have stabilized their livelihoods in these challenging times by working at universities and training film students, creating their own documentaries on the side. Among those well known filmmakers who have taken this path are: Jon Else (UC, Berkeley), Mark Harris (USC), Paul Stekler (University of Texas), Sam Pollard (NYU), Sheila Bernard (Princeton), Saleem Mercurio (Wellesley), and Ross McElwee (Harvard). Film programs and communications programs across the country are burgeoning with new students, to the extent that some in the academy are concerned about the ethics of accepting and training so many students when job opportunities are so limited. “Basically we are overwhelmed, and have had to put in place various mechanisms to control growth, i.e., a minimum-grade requirement and other qualitative reviews,” noted Chip Lord, chairman of the film department at UC, Santa Cruz (where enrollment has increased five-fold in eight years). The students who complete these programs form a very inexpensive labor pool.
The fact that it is now easier for anyone to acquire the resources to produce media is a reality that professionals in the field must accommodate. The hope is that when distribution options become less chaotic (assuming they eventually do) the viewer will appreciate the difference between a professionally produced, balanced and thoughtful program and one put together cheaply and provocatively (or autobiographically). In the emerging marketplace, there should be room for both, but broadcasters and underwriters are not seeing sufficient stability yet.
Media Consolidation
Technological convergence is occurring rapidly. Computers, televisions, iPods, flat-panel monitors and cell phones are all carrying video content, and the machines are becoming more and more alike. Corporate executives know that content is both ubiquitous and cheap, and they are responding to technological convergence by converging corporately. Media corporations want to own as many of the distribution platforms as they can. Phone companies are getting into the video business and Internet companies are getting into the telephone business. Consolidation is the area of media reform that has gotten the most attention among activists. Consolidation poses a threat to the free and independent expression of ideas. It poses a threat to ownership of history and culture. Consolidation is also a competitive threat for social issue media producers. When consolidation works, programs like “Desperate Housewives” can capture more viewer attention by being released as Web films, cell phone shorts, and for $1.99 downloads onto video iPods as well as through quick sales on DVDs. Right now, only large media corporations can take advantage of this multiplatform release, which makes it more challenging for social issue documentary programs to compete.
PBS made an attempt at this holistic approach to marketing with its release of “Rx for Survival” (a six-part series on global health). This project offers a strong example of a public media entity attempting to take advantage of convergence (Web, podcasts, print, publishing partnerships, radio partnerships). PBS promoted the program extensively and coordinated the broadcast with the release of a companion volume. According to one insider, the total budget for marketing, outreach and impact was over $6 million. The team coordinated the broadcast with the release of a companion volume. The producers hired actor Brad Pitt as the narrator. They launched an “Rx for Survival” newsletter. They coordinated additional media including an entire special issue of Time magazine, a segment on “NOW” (the PBS series) and multiple branded stories on National Public Radio. Johns Hopkins University developed an undergraduate curriculum around the project and numerous public television stations launched a six-month community education and outreach campaign around the project. Coby Atlas, co-chief programming executive at PBS, told us, “We really struggled to get an audience. We were disappointed in our inability to get big numbers.”
By traditional television measures (ratings), this project was not an obvious success. In today’s media environment, the initial audience ratings provide a limited snapshot of the project’s impact. As Atlas noted, “It was a good series. One that succeeded on many other levels.” The authors of this report believe that some version of this multiplatform approach (or “prepurposing,” as it has come to be known) is indispensable to increasing social issue media’s impact. If the key stakeholders in the industry can agree on new measures of success beyond “counting eyeballs and dividing by two,” as David Liroff of WGBH has said, then mimicking corporate convergence is likely to be effective. Of course, one of the key advantages of corporate convergence is being the gatekeeper for content, the owner of content and the distributor of products that come from that content. In order for this to work with social issue media, funders, distributors, broadcasters and producers would need to streamline decision-making and cooperation in their working relationships.
Commercialization
Recently the press has taken to describing these days as “the golden age of the documentary.” This perception is accurate almost solely in terms of theatrically released films (rather than documentaries produced for broadcast television). The growth in theatrically released documentaries is based in part on the savings realized by more economical production technology combined with the realization on the part of distributors and investors that there is money to be made here. Theatrically released documentaries cost a fraction of what feature films cost and their breakeven threshold is much lower. When that is combined with direct-to-customer DVD sales, select films can be quite profitable. But there are reasons to be wary. Investors expect a return on their investment (even when films are self-financed). In order to find an audience today, successful theatrically released documentary producers often find it necessary to preach to the converted – they offer shrill, partisan presentations that further fragment society or they entertain rather than educate. Cara Mertes, the executive director of American Documentary, noted that in order to get a theatrical release or a cable commitment, “a doc needs to have shock value… ‘give me a death or a titillating scene within the first five minutes.’” Lisa Heller, vice president of original programming at HBO, looks at it differently. In her view, “The public has caught on that contemporary documentaries are not 'Eat your spinach'-type programming… We have moved documentaries from educational to entertainment in terms of reputation." Whether or not this change is a good thing for the public and for the social issue media community is a question open to considerable debate.
Scheduling
In addition to the above challenges, social issue documentary producers have to deal with the reality of long-form documentaries rarely being scheduled on public television. This has become an informal but consistent policy at PBS. Coby Atlas notes that docs now need to be “part of an ongoing series with its own built-in audience” such as “POV” or “Independent Lens.” The producers’ guide from PBS puts it plainly: “Of the approximately 846 hours available for national prime-time programming each year, continuing series … make up just over 500 hours of the schedule. As a result, we have very few slots in each season for new series and specials.” This means that independent filmmakers hoping to distribute through PBS are encouraged to produce one-hour programs that can fit into an existing programming strand such as “Independent Lens” or “POV.” Tom Koch of WGBH Boston asked us, “How many new strands has PBS developed in the last 10 years?” The correspondingly diminished budget and the development time for these one-hour programs make it impossible to sustain an independent production company. “There’s a reason there are no more Blacksides” Coby Atlas told us, referring to the independent production company that produced “Eyes on the Prize” and several other stand-alone documentary series (with companion books, radio programming, telecourses, Web sites and outreach). The inconsistent funding for a one-hour documentary and the limited administrative support due to the diminished scale now prevent most producers from developing staff competency in crucial areas beyond the broadcast.
Scarce Funding
Because underwriters are aware of the changes in the media landscape and the challenges those changes pose to social issue media projects, finding funds to undertake a production has become increasingly difficult. And while new technologies have opened up numerous new options for distribution, these same technologies have fragmented audiences and stretched the public attention span to the breaking point. Major media funders have begun a retreat from underwriting social issue media. Nonmedia funders (education, social justice, environment, civil society) are looking for very specific outcomes according to their program priorities. John Kowal, of the Open Society Institute, told us, “We have high barriers for funding media work...our grants must be very keyed to specific priority areas.” Because funders often try not to duplicate the work of others in their fields, it has become increasingly difficult to knit together a group of foundations that share an interest in education, for example, for a major media project on education, because each funder is working toward a very specific message and impact. As Gretchen Sims, of the Joyce Foundation told us, “We want to put our dollars on work that needs to be done and isn’t getting support elsewhere. So that in our case, we maintain a focus on policy...therefore we wouldn’t put dollars in, say, teacher preparation, which is what Carnegie funds.”
Commercial funders occasionally see potential for making a profit at the back end of the distribution cycle and will sometimes offer advances against anticipated earnings sufficient to get a film produced. However, these same commercial pressures require “sex or murder within the first five minutes” and a screeching tone that will play to a partisan and easily identified audience. Securing a commitment remains difficult. As one documentary distributor noted, “…any documentary filmmaker making a documentary that is not commissioned by a network is basically committing financial suicide – or taking as long a shot as you would if you went to Las Vegas.”
Robert Silvestri, the founder of Environmental Media Fund, notes that nonprofit filmmakers need to learn from the for-profit sector. He thinks it is inefficient for producers to seek underwriting hat-in-hand. “Finding money is a beggar’s position,” he told us. “Deal-making is the way to think about it – making things so attractive that people with money want to be a part of it…. Producers should follow a business model – the return on investment for a charity is nonmonetary, but it is still a ROI.” On the other hand, Orlando Bagwell, of the Ford Foundation, notes that he is “uneasy with applying a commercial or for-profit model to documentaries. The desire for profit distorts the storytelling.”
One side note regarding securing funding for new productions: While new platforms are emerging for documentary films, new sources of funding are not emerging and old sources are waning. This means that, at least in the field of social issue media, there is a shortage of new films for the niche paths of distribution. The result is a kind of cannibalism (or “recycling,” to use Cara Mertes’s phrase). Examples of dusting off older docs and putting them on the air include: “Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter,” “A Healthy Baby Girl” and “Days of Waiting” – all being shown as a part of American Documentary’s “True Lives” series of classic documentaries being rebroadcast (or on television after a long-ago theatrical release); “Eyes on the Prize” (forthcoming in the fall of 2006 as a special “American Experience” re-launch), and the new partnership between HBO and PBS, which allows PBS to broadcast three documentary films after they have premiered on HBO. Cara Mertes notes that the “True Lives” films are also being released on DVD and are receiving special promotion through Netflix. She told us, “PBS docs do very well on demand because they are so well branded.”
Anyone affiliated with the field of social issue media is familiar with at least some of the challenges faced by producers, distributors, broadcasters and underwriters: broadcasters are giving less prime-time placement; fewer underwriters are offering support; producers are producing fewer of these programs; viewers are watching less; and the social impact of the few relevant social issue media documentaries that make it over these hurdles is seen by many to be negligible. This diminution is happening at a time when partisan documentaries and theatrically released documentaries are receiving unprecedented attention and are perceived to be commercially successful an era that Hollywood Reporter has described as a “documentary renaissance.”
Audience Fragmentation
In 2005, CBS announced that its season finale for the situation comedy “Everybody Loves Raymond” was a Monday night record breaker for the year. With 33 million viewers, it attracted the highest ratings the network earned that year.
But as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, in the late 1960s, CBS’s sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies” routinely drew 60 million viewers. In the late 1960s, viewers didn’t have many alternatives to the three major networks. Today, alternatives abound.
The story of the fragmentation of the media marketplace (and the niche clustering of audiences) has been well documented by many recent reports and articles. Suffice it to say that we are consuming an unprecedented amount of media and are doing so out of synch with what our family, neighbors and larger community are consuming. A recent report from Nielsen Media Research pointed out that Americans now spend more time in front of a television set than ever before. Today the average American spends more time using media devices – television, radio, iPods, and cell phones – than performing any other wakeful activity, according to a report from Ball State University. And with increases in broadband access and wireless video transmission and new storage technologies, people will be “swimming in an ocean of media,” as one commentator noted. The advent of Internet television (ITV) will increase that fragmentation. According to David Koenig, the founder of an ITV company, International Television Networks, “I can do everything a cable company can do, but I will have 100,000 channels.” The number of choices means that the individual consumer can find programming that suits his or her very specific interests at any time of day or night. It also means that people are rarely watching the same program as their friends, families and colleagues – and even more rarely, at the same time. Getting the attention of the American public has become remarkably difficult. Sally Jo Feiffer, of ITVS, told us, “With so much media out there, it’s like throwing confetti in the Grand Canyon.” The two things that work with some success – shrillness or big marketing budgets – are not available to producers of thoughtful social issue media.
In addition to the plethora of programming choices, consumers increasingly are “time shifting.” By using digital recorders such as TiVo and Comcast DR, viewers can ignore schedules and record and watch programs whenever they choose. The software program “Bit-Torrent” is now commonly used to download television programs onto computers (usually, illegally). This shift from a “push” model of broadcasting to a “pull” model will only contribute to the fragmentation of the viewing public. In 2006, the FCC reports that there are 530 national satellite-deliverable cable networks. That is an increase from 188 networks just one year ago.
Commercial pressure to make advertising much more efficient is a key force driving fragmentation, and virtually no media broadcaster has a long-term plan for capturing national audiences on anything other than a “spectacle” or event basis. Programming can be developed and delivered for specific demographic groups making the cost/benefit ratio much healthier for narrow, clearly defined audiences. As an advertiser, if you want to promote your client’s new fishing tool, it is best to advertise to people who fish rather than to the general public. As one media market researcher noted, “Fragmentation can be a challenge, but if you have a very niche brand, it can be a blessing.”
While it has never been easy for social issue documentaries to reach a wide and diverse audience, it was possible to create a buzz and get the public’s attention when there was less media competition. This is no longer the case, and it is unrealistic to believe that the media world’s fragmentation is going to reverse itself. Rather, social issue media producers must adapt to the changing conditions of the marketplace. While the broadcast component of a project must serve as the jumping off point for any nonbroadcast uses, it is now crucial that social issue documentary producers build other possible uses into projects from the outset. Llew Smith, a producer on “Race: The Power of an Illusion,” told us that during and after the broadcast numerous people told him how much they liked the project. “When I asked them when they saw the doc, not a one saw it on television. They saw it at group screenings, in classrooms, on DVD, but not on television.” Llew Smith’s experience is likely to become more common as media migrates from a single broadcast format to multiple platforms.
With the help of distributors, funders, and broadcasters, members of the social issue media community could use all available tools to weave together this time-shifting, ideologically partitioned marketplace. The tools at hand include satellite technology, the Internet, digital video recording, digital terrestrial television and broadcast, all of which may be used strategically to recreate a public sphere in which media sparks community-wide deliberation. Admittedly, this is asking a lot from people who are struggling to survive. It is the contention of the authors that such a concerted effort cannot begin until key stakeholders establish shared values and common measures of success (see recommendations below), as well as systems, bodies and institutions to facilitate and manage this transition from analog to digital.
New Technologies and Reduced Barriers to Entry
All of the problems confronting the viability of social issue media are interconnected, and all are tied most closely to changes in media technology. Along with new, low-cost methods of distribution (referenced above) we are seeing new, low-cost methods of production. ITVS’s Sally Jo Feiffer told us, “New technology means that the quality of programs and the production values are improving. There’s more of a variety of styles now. Low-cost HD cameras mean that the quality is beautiful. That low cost also means that now, everybody is a media producer.” Robert Silvestri of the Environmental Media Fund put it this way: “Everybody I know with $5000 and a camera is a filmmaker.” For those who are skeptical of the value of gatekeepers or the need for professional balance being presented to the broadest segment of the public, this explosion of blogs, vlogs, Web movies and cell phone/PDA/iPod videos holds the promise of renewed democracy. There is no doubt that much innovation and many interesting formats and programming approaches will arise from this abundance of technology and that citizens and groups that have never before had access to the media will find a voice. It is also clear that those new voices will rarely be heard beyond the current believers.
Additionally, amateurs producing documentaries using their digital video cameras and their credit cards (or producing a theatrical documentary for as little as $295) pose a competitive threat to veterans in the field, and they are diminishing the ability of long-standing producers to secure professional-level funding. Coby Atlas, of PBS, notes, “Serious thoughtful work like ‘Eyes on the Prize’ or ‘Rx for Survival’ can’t be done by a one-man band – a person with a digital camera and a blog.” Moreover, the increased number of good, bad and middling documentaries will further distract the public’s limited attention from rigorously researched, thoughtful, well-produced work. As a reporter for the New York Times noted,
Digital technology has made filmmaking so cheap and easy that now almost anyone can point a camera at a difficult father or a wicked stepmother and call it a movie. And more of them are making it into theaters. Nielsen EDI, which tracks box office data, found that 50 documentaries were released in 2002 and 53 in 2003 – a number that jumped to 80 last year (a rapidly growing chunk of the 500 or so films typically released each year)....Even the most successful political documentaries are not likely to approach the box office numbers of Michael Moore's artful, entertaining ''Fahrenheit 9/11,'' which was propelled by election-year frenzy. But that hasn't stopped less creative filmmakers from trying...
Perhaps these are the realities to which veterans in the industry must adjust (or perhaps the exodus of professionals will continue and a new breed of filmmakers with a different set of values, standards and goals will rise). In referencing the radical changes occurring in the media industry, Fortune magazine pointed out that “Paradigm shifts are rarely kind to incumbents.” It is not certain that quality counts for nearly as much as many professionals like to think. An abundance of low-budget producers churning out limitless media product, combined with an audience not obviously drawn to quality, may well be proof of what Fortune contends.
Reduced barriers to entry mean that there is more competition for veteran social issue media producers: competition for funding, for distribution, for audience and for impact. While production costs have come down for the technical components of media production, the key labor costs have not. As Cara Mertes of American Documentary told us, “Making serious, thoughtful documentaries is still labor-intensive work. Some production costs have come down substantially, but the time it takes to research, deliberate and craft a good film has not come down.”
Many veteran documentary producers have stabilized their livelihoods in these challenging times by working at universities and training film students, creating their own documentaries on the side. Among those well known filmmakers who have taken this path are: Jon Else (UC, Berkeley), Mark Harris (USC), Paul Stekler (University of Texas), Sam Pollard (NYU), Sheila Bernard (Princeton), Saleem Mercurio (Wellesley), and Ross McElwee (Harvard). Film programs and communications programs across the country are burgeoning with new students, to the extent that some in the academy are concerned about the ethics of accepting and training so many students when job opportunities are so limited. “Basically we are overwhelmed, and have had to put in place various mechanisms to control growth, i.e., a minimum-grade requirement and other qualitative reviews,” noted Chip Lord, chairman of the film department at UC, Santa Cruz (where enrollment has increased five-fold in eight years). The students who complete these programs form a very inexpensive labor pool.
The fact that it is now easier for anyone to acquire the resources to produce media is a reality that professionals in the field must accommodate. The hope is that when distribution options become less chaotic (assuming they eventually do) the viewer will appreciate the difference between a professionally produced, balanced and thoughtful program and one put together cheaply and provocatively (or autobiographically). In the emerging marketplace, there should be room for both, but broadcasters and underwriters are not seeing sufficient stability yet.
Media Consolidation
Technological convergence is occurring rapidly. Computers, televisions, iPods, flat-panel monitors and cell phones are all carrying video content, and the machines are becoming more and more alike. Corporate executives know that content is both ubiquitous and cheap, and they are responding to technological convergence by converging corporately. Media corporations want to own as many of the distribution platforms as they can. Phone companies are getting into the video business and Internet companies are getting into the telephone business. Consolidation is the area of media reform that has gotten the most attention among activists. Consolidation poses a threat to the free and independent expression of ideas. It poses a threat to ownership of history and culture. Consolidation is also a competitive threat for social issue media producers. When consolidation works, programs like “Desperate Housewives” can capture more viewer attention by being released as Web films, cell phone shorts, and for $1.99 downloads onto video iPods as well as through quick sales on DVDs. Right now, only large media corporations can take advantage of this multiplatform release, which makes it more challenging for social issue documentary programs to compete.
PBS made an attempt at this holistic approach to marketing with its release of “Rx for Survival” (a six-part series on global health). This project offers a strong example of a public media entity attempting to take advantage of convergence (Web, podcasts, print, publishing partnerships, radio partnerships). PBS promoted the program extensively and coordinated the broadcast with the release of a companion volume. According to one insider, the total budget for marketing, outreach and impact was over $6 million. The team coordinated the broadcast with the release of a companion volume. The producers hired actor Brad Pitt as the narrator. They launched an “Rx for Survival” newsletter. They coordinated additional media including an entire special issue of Time magazine, a segment on “NOW” (the PBS series) and multiple branded stories on National Public Radio. Johns Hopkins University developed an undergraduate curriculum around the project and numerous public television stations launched a six-month community education and outreach campaign around the project. Coby Atlas, co-chief programming executive at PBS, told us, “We really struggled to get an audience. We were disappointed in our inability to get big numbers.”
By traditional television measures (ratings), this project was not an obvious success. In today’s media environment, the initial audience ratings provide a limited snapshot of the project’s impact. As Atlas noted, “It was a good series. One that succeeded on many other levels.” The authors of this report believe that some version of this multiplatform approach (or “prepurposing,” as it has come to be known) is indispensable to increasing social issue media’s impact. If the key stakeholders in the industry can agree on new measures of success beyond “counting eyeballs and dividing by two,” as David Liroff of WGBH has said, then mimicking corporate convergence is likely to be effective. Of course, one of the key advantages of corporate convergence is being the gatekeeper for content, the owner of content and the distributor of products that come from that content. In order for this to work with social issue media, funders, distributors, broadcasters and producers would need to streamline decision-making and cooperation in their working relationships.
Commercialization
Recently the press has taken to describing these days as “the golden age of the documentary.” This perception is accurate almost solely in terms of theatrically released films (rather than documentaries produced for broadcast television). The growth in theatrically released documentaries is based in part on the savings realized by more economical production technology combined with the realization on the part of distributors and investors that there is money to be made here. Theatrically released documentaries cost a fraction of what feature films cost and their breakeven threshold is much lower. When that is combined with direct-to-customer DVD sales, select films can be quite profitable. But there are reasons to be wary. Investors expect a return on their investment (even when films are self-financed). In order to find an audience today, successful theatrically released documentary producers often find it necessary to preach to the converted – they offer shrill, partisan presentations that further fragment society or they entertain rather than educate. Cara Mertes, the executive director of American Documentary, noted that in order to get a theatrical release or a cable commitment, “a doc needs to have shock value… ‘give me a death or a titillating scene within the first five minutes.’” Lisa Heller, vice president of original programming at HBO, looks at it differently. In her view, “The public has caught on that contemporary documentaries are not 'Eat your spinach'-type programming… We have moved documentaries from educational to entertainment in terms of reputation." Whether or not this change is a good thing for the public and for the social issue media community is a question open to considerable debate.
Scheduling
In addition to the above challenges, social issue documentary producers have to deal with the reality of long-form documentaries rarely being scheduled on public television. This has become an informal but consistent policy at PBS. Coby Atlas notes that docs now need to be “part of an ongoing series with its own built-in audience” such as “POV” or “Independent Lens.” The producers’ guide from PBS puts it plainly: “Of the approximately 846 hours available for national prime-time programming each year, continuing series … make up just over 500 hours of the schedule. As a result, we have very few slots in each season for new series and specials.” This means that independent filmmakers hoping to distribute through PBS are encouraged to produce one-hour programs that can fit into an existing programming strand such as “Independent Lens” or “POV.” Tom Koch of WGBH Boston asked us, “How many new strands has PBS developed in the last 10 years?” The correspondingly diminished budget and the development time for these one-hour programs make it impossible to sustain an independent production company. “There’s a reason there are no more Blacksides” Coby Atlas told us, referring to the independent production company that produced “Eyes on the Prize” and several other stand-alone documentary series (with companion books, radio programming, telecourses, Web sites and outreach). The inconsistent funding for a one-hour documentary and the limited administrative support due to the diminished scale now prevent most producers from developing staff competency in crucial areas beyond the broadcast.
Scarce Funding
Because underwriters are aware of the changes in the media landscape and the challenges those changes pose to social issue media projects, finding funds to undertake a production has become increasingly difficult. And while new technologies have opened up numerous new options for distribution, these same technologies have fragmented audiences and stretched the public attention span to the breaking point. Major media funders have begun a retreat from underwriting social issue media. Nonmedia funders (education, social justice, environment, civil society) are looking for very specific outcomes according to their program priorities. John Kowal, of the Open Society Institute, told us, “We have high barriers for funding media work...our grants must be very keyed to specific priority areas.” Because funders often try not to duplicate the work of others in their fields, it has become increasingly difficult to knit together a group of foundations that share an interest in education, for example, for a major media project on education, because each funder is working toward a very specific message and impact. As Gretchen Sims, of the Joyce Foundation told us, “We want to put our dollars on work that needs to be done and isn’t getting support elsewhere. So that in our case, we maintain a focus on policy...therefore we wouldn’t put dollars in, say, teacher preparation, which is what Carnegie funds.”
Commercial funders occasionally see potential for making a profit at the back end of the distribution cycle and will sometimes offer advances against anticipated earnings sufficient to get a film produced. However, these same commercial pressures require “sex or murder within the first five minutes” and a screeching tone that will play to a partisan and easily identified audience. Securing a commitment remains difficult. As one documentary distributor noted, “…any documentary filmmaker making a documentary that is not commissioned by a network is basically committing financial suicide – or taking as long a shot as you would if you went to Las Vegas.”
Robert Silvestri, the founder of Environmental Media Fund, notes that nonprofit filmmakers need to learn from the for-profit sector. He thinks it is inefficient for producers to seek underwriting hat-in-hand. “Finding money is a beggar’s position,” he told us. “Deal-making is the way to think about it – making things so attractive that people with money want to be a part of it…. Producers should follow a business model – the return on investment for a charity is nonmonetary, but it is still a ROI.” On the other hand, Orlando Bagwell, of the Ford Foundation, notes that he is “uneasy with applying a commercial or for-profit model to documentaries. The desire for profit distorts the storytelling.”
One side note regarding securing funding for new productions: While new platforms are emerging for documentary films, new sources of funding are not emerging and old sources are waning. This means that, at least in the field of social issue media, there is a shortage of new films for the niche paths of distribution. The result is a kind of cannibalism (or “recycling,” to use Cara Mertes’s phrase). Examples of dusting off older docs and putting them on the air include: “Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter,” “A Healthy Baby Girl” and “Days of Waiting” – all being shown as a part of American Documentary’s “True Lives” series of classic documentaries being rebroadcast (or on television after a long-ago theatrical release); “Eyes on the Prize” (forthcoming in the fall of 2006 as a special “American Experience” re-launch), and the new partnership between HBO and PBS, which allows PBS to broadcast three documentary films after they have premiered on HBO. Cara Mertes notes that the “True Lives” films are also being released on DVD and are receiving special promotion through Netflix. She told us, “PBS docs do very well on demand because they are so well branded.”
