‘History, yes. Science, sure. Sharks, yes’ – what millennials want from factual TV

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/13/what-millennials-want-from-factual-tv

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“The word ‘millennial’ means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, so it’s totally useless really. Millennial means something that happens once every thousand years, like Hereford winning the Champions League.”

Sam Barcroft, chief executive of Barcroft Productions, wasn’t entirely on-message with the concept of the “Future of Factual: What do Millennials Want?” panel session he was participating in at the MIPDoc conference in Cannes this weekend.

“Everyone should reset that phrase. It’s used by advertising departments when the CEO rings up to say ‘I’m gonna sack you because our advertising revenues are so much worse than last year,” he continued, claiming that figuring out who millennials are and why they’re watching less broadcast TV has the television industry in a flap.

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“What they’ve realised is that there’s a new generation of people who are digital natives: they are people who were born with the internet, and who go to the internet first,” said Barcroft.

“The millennial thing is just a panic button for most people, which is why Vice have done so well: ‘We understand millennials, that’s our tactic. We’re super cool, we know what millennials are’. When they went in to see these companies, everybody went ‘Really? I don’t know what they are, but I want to reach them.” But digital natives is what you want to concentrate on.”

Barcroft Productions is reaching a fair few of those millen … digital natives, particularly with its Barcroft TV YouTube channel, which has grown to more than 1m subscribers and 950m views with news reports built for social sharing – from crocodile-eating snakes and lion-tossing buffalo to “Instagram’s most famous butt” and a 175lb pit bull dog.

‘Everything from D-Day to sharks to brain science to UFOs’

The focus for the MIPDoc panel session was on whether young people still want to watch factual programmes: news and documentaries. Barcroft TV’s biggest hits tend towards the sensational, but its founder’s fellow panellists said that the millennial appetite for factual goes beyond the bizarre.

Greg Diefenbach, managing director for US documentaries company XiveTV, said that his company specialises in longform documentaries. “History, science, adventure: everything from D-Day to sharks to brain science to UFOs, but all longform: no clips,” he said. XiveTV distributes its shows through platforms like Amazon and Hulu, but also as a standalone app for iOS, Android and connected TVs.

Diefenbach talked about a “legacy attitude” from YouTube’s early days. “There was this perception that online video is really about clips: nobody’s going to watch anything but clips,” he said. “One of the myths we’ve exploded was that people won’t watch longform content on IPTV platforms. They do.”

He also agreed with Barcroft that the least interesting way to define “millennials” is to focus on their age – basically anyone who came of age between 2000 and now – preferring to point to other defining characteristics.

“They’re generally tech-savvy, and they came of age and went into the marketplace at a time when the economy was not favourable to them, so they don’t have a traditional positive relationship with established businesses. They didn’t get paid well: they were generally broke as young people in tough economic times,” he said.

“And third, they were bombarded with advertising from the time they were born. They’re generally very sceptical of traditional advertising messaging: it doesn’t work very well for them as they very easily filter out and turn off advertising messaging. So they have to be reached through other means. Peer group – peer-to-peer – messaging works very well. Traditional advertising works very poorly.”

The third member of the panel was Jeremy Lee, executive producer at UK factual production company Nerd TV. Lee suggested that the TV industry sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick when assuming younger viewers want completely different kinds of factual shows to older generations.

“They are interested in stories that have strong narratives and long arcs and they’ll go wherever to find those stories,” he said, citing US series The Jinx – a miniseries about Robert Durst, who was subsequently arrested on a murder warrant due to comments he made while being filmed – as a recent example.

“They want good compelling story which will engage them, but they also want shared viewing experiences,” said Lee. “In the UK, The Island at the moment is generating quite a lot of heat. So are things like Bake Off. They still want those experiences that linear TV can deliver.”

Diefenbach agreed, suggesting younger viewers are far from completely divorced from the subjects that documentary makers have concentrated on in the past.

“History, yeah. Science, sure. Sharks, yes. The difference is they’re seeking an authenticity – a voice – an authenticity around the presentation of that material that is unlike what we were accustomed to in the past,” he said.

“If it feels slick, overproduced, if they’re being manipulated by a network … it feels pitchy, and that’s not resonating very well. If it feels like it has a point of view, it’s authentic, it’s shareable with their friends? That’s what’s going to do better.”

Should established TV channels be chasing after the millennials audience? Barcroft didn’t mince his words with his opinion. “They have to, because otherwise all their viewers will die and there’ll be nobody left to watch their channels, which is what’s happening in newspapers,” he said. “What’s happening in cable TV is mirroring what happened in newspapers amazingly similarly.”

‘People are watching our long docs on mobiles’

Barcroft also talked about the importance of other screens, noting that his company tried 50 hours of longform documentaries on its online channel in 2014. “It turns out that 40% of our longform viewing is on mobile phones. People are watching our long docs on mobiles: that’s just what kids do,” he said.

Diefenbach returned to the theme of YouTube’s early culture leading to some misconceptions about what online TV is good for – mainly shortform clips.

“The interest in clips was moulded by the early technology: it was glitchy, it couldn’t load quickly, the resolution wasn’t very high. You’re not sitting down to watch an hour-long documentary. But as the technology improved, longform became more and more watchable and more deliverable online,” he said.

“We deliver in-depth exploration of a subject in a way that traditional linear television is not willing to do, at least in the United States. For our Easter special, we did 18 hours on the history of the Bible and the origins of christianity. A super-deep dive for an audience that wants to drill deep.”

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This turned the conversation to the question of whether the assumption that younger viewers have shorter attention spans, with Barcroft encouraging his peers to pay more attention to neuroplasticity studies of how people’s brains are adapting to changing viewing behaviours.

“Our brains are reprogramming in new ways which means attention spans are going down,” he said. “Networks have asked me to pitch series in 15-minute shows instead of half-hours. People are looking for shortform.”

He pointed to two camps within the TV world: one that believes it doesn’t matter how long a show is as long as it’s engaging, and the other that thinks “shorter is better and longer is better but the middle bit is the bad bit”. He also warned that every show faces huge competition from other forms of entertainment – games, for example – with young people willing to turn off as soon as they get bored.

“Your stuff has to be noisier, more compelling, and have an emotional kickback. It needs to make them feel something in their body. ‘Visceral’ is a good word,” said Barcroft. “You’ve got to use more of the tools in the toolbox to really connect.”

Lee agreed. “Regardless of longform or shortform, it’s about engaging people really quickly,” he said. “If you can hit someone with a very powerful scene right at the start of your documentary, you’ve got their attention and they’re more likely to stick with you.”

Barcroft had the last word. “Our golden rule is if the first 10 seconds doesn’t knock your socks off, nobody’s going to watch it,” he said.