How well do you think you could guess why someone wanted to watch your programme? Or what they might want to watch next?
It’s safe to assume most people have moved away from just quoting the BARB figures or talking in ABC 1s, but actually putting the audience at the centre of everything you’re doing is still quite a shift. It’s all well and good talking about IP first or brands being the new commissioner, but none of that matters if you don’t truly understand your audience and why they care about watching what you make.
The biggest mistake anyone can make is assuming there is a playbook to be executed rather than business models to be borrowed, remixed and customised to your exact situation. Time Team, Bluey and The Rest Is.. all look completely different and yet they have all developed a business model that excels within the reality of modern production.
Starting with who your audience is, or even who your audience could be, given your expertise, knowledge, IP and talent, is ground zero allows you to develop your business model based on what emerges rather than what the latest guru tells you to be true. If Time Team had focused purely on brand partnerships, they may have never discovered their community-driven model, or if The Rest Is.. had refused anything where they didn’t have direct access to the audience, they wouldn’t have expanded their reach with the Netflix series.
If there’s no playbook, then what?
It’s not that you shouldn’t have a plan but more that you should be comfortable with that plan changing. The entry point for any production company should be finding the easiest route to getting started, then focusing on how to adapt when the plan meets reality.
This is where the culture shock kicks in. A lot of time is spent discussing the difference in production quality, but rarely the difference in production speed. On a recent episode of Colin and Samir’s podcast, their guest described being stuck in “development hell”, which is an alien concept in the creator industries but considered standard in the production industry.
“Development hell, if you’re not aware, is basically when you go into a studio and you go, I have an idea and they’re like, we’d love to hear it…then two years later you’re like, aren’t we making something? They’re like, who are you?” Tom Segura on the Colin and Samir show.
Talking about something for longer won’t make it more likely to succeed; no one’s opinion matters more than your audience’s. The only way to get closer to success is to understand first-hand what your audience likes and ideally why. And that doesn’t come from waiting around talking about it, it comes from hitting publish.
The Starting Point
No one knows the answer; the lesson is to read widely, analyse other people’s success forensically and become an expert in the business models that are taking off. The difference in making it a success is doing this after you’ve hit publish, rather than spending time perfecting your plan. Having a real example to test, adapt, and evolve will get you infinitely closer to the version of success that works for you.
Nick Bennett is CEO of Nerve Media Group
