Night after night, people are tuning in to see docu specials and series about UFOs, the Hell's Angels, gang wars, bounty hunters, prison lockdowns, and even one called "The Secret History of the Bra."
Where are these shows turning up? Surprisingly, on the august National Geographic Channel, which doesn't feel at all queasy about subjecting one of the most revered brands in the annals of American business to the potential criticism of sliding too far toward exploitation TV.
First of all, the edgier the documentary, the likelier it will harvest a bumper crop of viewers, particularly upscale, urban young males. That audience is typically so hard to reach that Madison Avenue will fork over a premium to any cable network that delivers it, and Nat Geo draws an average audience that's 61% male and 39% female. The network's median age in primetime is a not-bad 46.5.
The ad-revenue argument is important because News Corp., which owns two-thirds of the Nat Geo Channel, has an abiding love affair with companies that generate eye-opening profits. And Nat Geo's cash flow shot up by 17% in 2007, according to SNL Kagan, which projects another 5% jump this year, to a robust $138 million.
Beyond money, there's another big reason why the Nat Geo Channel can shrug off any external sniping about its pushing the boundaries of nonfiction programming. "We have a unique standards-and-practices department," says Steve Schiffman, general manager of the network. "There's not one hour of content that gets on the network without careful review by our professionals for factual accuracy and appropriateness."
Producers who supply programs to Nat Geo say the network is so protective of the reputation of its brand that it won't tolerate even the slightest error or exaggeration.
As one producer put it: "No other network has an internal fact-checking operation like Nat Geo's. It insists on fully annotated scripts, with double sources for every fact."
While suppliers may get frustrated by the network's fastidiousness, Schiffman says that "a brand which has thrived for 120 years means a whole lot more than the Nielsen rating of one particular show on one given night."
For example, Nat Geo passed on a proposal that became the sensational James Cameron-produced docu "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," which postulated that a limestone ossuary in Jerusalem contained the bones of Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalen and a son they purportedly had called Judah.
When Discovery ran the two-hour special in March 2007, it racked up the network's best ratings in 18 months -- but the cabler came under fire from critics. It hastily put together a panel discussion of experts hosted by Ted Koppel (featuring two defenders of the thesis and two debunkers) and scheduled it immediately following the docu.
Even though Nat Geo lost a blockbuster ratings-getter in that case, for Rich Goldfarb, senior VP of media sales for the network, all of the network's tough behind-the-scenes scrutiny is helping, not hurting, the bottom line. Nat Geo chalked up 43% more revenue during the 2007-08 upfront than last season, Goldfarb says. Recent discussions with media buyers, he adds, give Goldfarb confidence that the '08-'09 upfront will easily chalk up another double-digit gain.
Like almost every big cable network these days, Goldfarb offers advertisers lots of other outlets for their money than the 24/7 network. Nat Geo has a busy website that streams video of various ad-supported programs, a high-def-simulcast network that could balloon to 20 million subscribers in the next year, and a free-on-demand platform chockfull of series episodes and specials, as well as wireless delivery of shortform programming and video podcasts.
Goldfarb says Nat Geo runs neck and neck in its demographic target of adults 25-54 with rivals like Travel Channel and Animal Planet, despite the fact Nat Geo (with only 67 million subscribers) is at a significant disadvantage to Animal Planet (94 million) and Travel (91.5 million).
But Nat Geo's ratings have started to level off this winter after five straight years of double-digit Nielsen growth in both overall audience (it averaged 381,000 primetime viewers in 2007) and adults 25-54.
So Nat Geo has opened the sluice gates, funneling another 10% into the programming operation to swell the total to a record $93.2 million this year, says SNL Kagan. The result is one of the most ambitious lineups of specials Nat Geo has ever commissioned.
For the fourth quarter alone, Nat Geo has three biggies, starting with "Cave of the Giant Crystals," a visit to a rarely explored cavern in Mexico crosscut with hundreds of crystals, many of them more than 40-feet long. "Herod's Lost Tomb" is the culmination of a 30-year search sponsored by the Nat Geo Society for the ancient sarcophagus. And "Journey to the Edge of the Universe" draws on real pictures from the world's most powerful telescopes and simulated images created through CGI.
The titles of some of next year's specials include "The Great Rhino," "Blue Whale Mystery," "Baby Mammoth Autopsy," "On Board Air Force One," "Drain the Ocean" and "Mystery of the Templar Tomb."
One of the biggest boasts of Steve Burns, executive VP of content for the network, is that Nat Geo has tripled the number of weekly series it schedules in primetime. Burns says beefing up the series lineup will create viewer habits, a time-tested way to get more people to watch the network.
For example, Thursday is science/technology night, home of series such as "Who Knew? With Marshall Brain" and "Naked Science." The occupants on Sunday include "Bounty Hunters" and "Lockdown." Friday is the destination for Nat Geo's most consistently popular series, "The Dog Whisperer," with Cesar Millan.
And Nat Geo is touting Dr. Brady Barr as the personality who could fill the gap left by the accidental death of Steve Irwin, the popular Croc Hunter of Animal Planet. Hosting the series called "Dangerous Encounters," which just kicked off on Nat Geo, Dr. Barr is a herpetologist who's not above climbing into a 200-pound hippo suit in order to get up close and personal with hippos in the wild.
The good doctor had better come up with big audiences, because Nat Geo is paying through both nostrils for the insurance.
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