Unscripted TV: What's Selling Now and How to Sell It
Top producers on navigating new realities of a tough market: Paltry budgets, co-production deals and brand support, and the silver lining of the cable nets
Good morning, Series Business readers. Hope all of you in L.A. (and pretty much everywhere else it seems) are staying cool during this little heatwave. When you can’t or don’t want to go outside, having a docuseries to binge is the equivalent of a cool breeze, and I spent part of my inside time digging into Netflix’s new docuseries, America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, a look into an often underestimated form of athleticism (said this former college cheerleader). And, appropriate segue alert, today we’re taking a look at the non-scripted TV market and how some of its indie producers are faring.
What’s become super clear is that the non-scripted boom that the town anticipated last year during the Writers Guild of America strike did not, in fact, happen. If anything, it was the “anti-boom? The implosion? I’m not sure,” says Magilla Entertainment cofounder Matt Ostrom, whose company produced TLC’s Long Island Medium franchise among other reality TV and docuseries. Ostrom says it’s been taking a longer-than-expected time for such projects to get greenlit.
In June 2023, for instance, Ostrom had a drink with the head of a network and together they “came up with a crazy idea” for a non-scripted series.
“He loved it,” recalls Ostrom, who then received funding to develop the idea, got notes from the network and started casting. Since then, he’s had multiple meetings with network execs and producers. “I really thought I would be in production by, you know, September.”
Normally, development of a non-scripted series could take anywhere between three to six months. But now, a year later, he is still “waiting and waiting.”
The story of the reality and docuseries market is in some ways not so dissimilar from the appetite for scripted shows — smaller budgets, fewer slots to fill, a slow start to 2024 that has translated to depressed demand.
That said, there are some bright spots in non-scripted TV.
“The odd thing is: I probably have more paid network development than . . . I don’t know if I want to say ever before, but certainly maybe ever before,” says Ostrom. “I haven’t done the math on it, but in some ways I feel very hopeful and positive about where we are or where we’re going . . . I know the series order — it’s not going to be 56 episodes. It’s probably going to be 13 or 24. So I think there’s this adjustment period of, that’s what 2023 was. Like, ‘Oh, this is our reality.’ And then '24 was adjusting to that reality, and then trying to figure out how to get to '25.”
There, in not so many words, is that phrase again: Survive ‘til ‘25.
To get some perspective on how independent reality TV producers are faring in these trying times, I talked to Ostrom as well as Lucky 8 founders Greg Henry and Kim Woodard (NatGeo’s To Catch a Smuggler and A&E’s 60 Days In).
In today’s Series Business, we’ll explore:
The two major hurdles to getting an unscripted project greenlit
Why unscripted producers are always in the risk-taking business
Which buyers are left in the market — and the projects they’re looking for
Why selling a show to a dying cable network rather than Netflix can often be a bigger win
How tighter budgets are impacting unscripted production
The creative financing indie producers are using to get networks to back shows
Which genre is hot and what’s a tough sell today