Little Dot Studios activities in the USA

Increasingly over the last few months I have been working and commissioning at Little Dot Studios with more than half an eye on the USA. To that end I have been working closely with Paul Woolf, formerly of Barcroft and Maverick, and my old colleagues Dan Jones and Alex Hryniewicz of Little Dot. Here is a piece about it from today’s Broadcast…

A mid-form online Original documentary I commissioned for Real Stories – shot in Montana by Debbie Howard

Little Dot taps up Barcroft exec for US unscripted role

Paul Woolf will supercharge development of indie’s factual strand

Little Dot Studios is ramping up its Real Stories doc strand across the Atlantic with the appointment of its first US head of unscripted development.

Barcroft head of development Paul Woolf has been hired to supercharge the development of the All3Media-backed indie’s factual brand, as it aims to commission more long-form docs and series for US networks and platforms.

Woolf has already commenced in the East Coast-based role, reporting into Little Dot director of content Dan Jones.

The former Maverick TV development director said he was delighted to join a team that with “an incredibly broad and deep understanding of both TV and social platforms”.

Jones added: “Paul is a fantastic development talent and his arrival allows us to make a sustained push in the US, which is hugely exciting.”

During his time with Barcroft, Woolf was behind Netflix format Amazing Interiors and worked on a range of short-form projects for the outfit’s in-house digital platforms.

He joined fellow All3Media indie Maverick TV as US development exec in 2008, relocating to the UK in 2010 to work on BBC2 social experiment Old School and Billy Connolly’s Route 66 for ITV.

Real Stories, which includes the likes of My Son the Jihadi and America’s Poor Kids, is headed up by former Channel 4 multiplatform commissioner Adam Gee.

Little Dot said it generates around 1 million cross-platform views a day on sites such as YouTube. The vast majority of viewers are aged 16-34 and more than 71% of its audience hail from the UK, North America and Australasia.

Shows from the strand are also available via a $3.99 (£3) per month SVoD app, which launched earlier this year.

Little Dot has been busy hiring this year, having already appointed Holly Graham as its inaugural head of US partnerships, while it picked up former C4 group partnership manager Jade Raad as head of brand partnerships for its newly-formed media division.

[text courtesy of Broadcast]

In Your Face – Week 1

A cool 9 million views for this cut-down from the documentary ‘In Your Face’ in its first week, with high engagement – 5,500 comments; 65,000 shares; 52,000 reactions. Part of this success we have concluded is down to the likeability and charm of the protagonist, Jason – (it has outperformed other similar videos and the casting seems to provide the explanation).

The full film of ‘In Your Face’ is here. The full film on Facebook/Facebook Watch has netted 1.8M views this week which is also a very decent performance and underlined that this is very much a Facebook rather than a YouTube subject, benefitting from viewers engaged through sharing and commenting and happy to pick the videos up in their stream rather than deliberately seeking it out in some way.

I have now made 40 documentaries on tattoos including these series for Channel 4:

• Tattoo Twists [8 films]
• My Secret Tattoo [9 films]
• SeXXXy Tats [6 films]
• Tattoo Fails [6 films]
• My First Tattoo [10 films]

Tattoo Twists – my first tattoo series, inspired Channel 4’s Tattoo Fixers

My Secret Tattoo – this man works with the Minister of Defence (with this hidden under his shirt & tie)

A random still from Tattoo Fails

Little Dot gears up for SVoD

The latest news about the commissioning of original documentaries I’ve been doing at Little Dot Studios over the last few months – from today’s Broadcast 

by Alex Farber | 26 October 2017

Absent from our Own Wedding

All3Media-backed firm steps up commissioning and acquisitions in run-up to launch of service

Little Dot Studios has kicked off a commissioning and acquisitions drive as it prepares to launch an SVoD service later this year.

The All3Media-backed business has appointed former Channel 4 multiplatform commissioner Adam Gee and Beyond Distribution head of acquisitions Caitlin Meek-O’Connor to spearhead the push.

Commissioning editor Gee has ordered his first slate of originals, including Underworld TV’s Sorry I Shot You, Big Buddha Films and Medialab UK’s Absent From Our Own Wedding and Showem Entertainment’s In Your Face as part of a £200,000 investment.

The factual films, all of which run to around 15-20 minutes, will feature as part of the Shoreditch-based firm’s Real Stories online channel, which is distributed via YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

The shows, due to launch in mid-November, will also be used as the bedrock for a forthcoming direct-to-consumer app alongside a host of third-party programming.

Shared profits

Meek-O’Connor has begun striking deals with distributors, with around 2,000 hours of programming licensed to date. Many of these shows are picked up from suppliers for free, with the profits generated shared equally – Little Dot is set to return around £1.5m to distributors this year.

Co-founder Andy Taylor said he is looking to exponentially grow the firm he established in 2013. The business, founded by Taylor and Selma Turajlic, has doubled in size year-on-year. In 2016, it posted a turnover of £9.8m, up from £5.2m the previous year. Operating profits jumped from £300,000 to £1.2m in this period.

“Someone needs to put a stake in the ground and build a premium mid-form destination because the quality of content currently is poor,” said Taylor. “There has been a massive explosion in mobile video but none of the resource or investment from TV has leaked over. In the next three to five years, I need to build channels with massive scale, which house only premium content.”

Taylor added that he is eyeing a direct-to- consumer launch by the end of the year, with platforms under consideration including Amazon Channels, Apple TV and Roku.

“We need to be on those platforms because the monetisation opportunities are so much better. It’s harder to get reach, but they offer much higher advertising rates and we can experiment with SVoD too,” he explained.

Real Stories is being touted as a subscription forerunner, with launches for science and history themed sister channels Spark and Timeline also being weighed up.

In September, Barcroft Media’s YouTube channel Barcroft TV launched an ad-funded TV app. However, Taylor is not turning his back on the digital giants and is putting particular focus on Facebook. Changes to the Mark Zuckerburg-run platform have meant that Little Dot video viewing has soared, from virtually zero to 150 million monthly views in just three months.

“The new Facebook”

From his 120- strong staff, Taylor has appointed eight Facebook-dedicated editors who are tasked with closely tracking the changes to its algorithm and reactively clipping and posting videos for maximum exposure.

“We are trying to grow the digital brands of the future,” said Taylor. “Our bet is that over time, the platforms have to favour premium content – because that is what advertisers demand.”

While people visit YouTube less frequently than they do Facebook, they tend to stay for longer and are happy to watch 15 to 20-minute videos. Facebook visitors prefer shorter clips. Taylor said that Instagram, which has three Little Dot editors assigned, is fast becoming “the new Facebook”.

Sport is another area of focus, with Sky Sports commercial manager Rory Rigney hired as senior partnerships manager to forge ties with rights holders to manage their channels. With talks under way with major football and cricketing governing bodies, the sports-themed channels will join Little Dot’s network of broadcaster and producer- owned channels, including ITV, Warner Bros, Discovery and Turner, as well as All3Media.

{text courtesy of Broadcast}

So long and thanks for all the fish…

An extract from an article in Broadcast today. {courtesy of Broadcast}

 

 

Senior digital commissioners depart in C4 shake-up

24 May, 2016 | By Alex Farber

 

Channel 4 commissioners Adam Gee and Jody Smith are to leave the broadcaster after more than a decade as part of a restructure at digital video service All 4.

The broadcaster is shaking up All 4’s editorial team, scrapping genre commissioning in favour of recruiting an overarching executive who will be responsible for curating, acquiring and commissioning programming.

As a result, Gee and Smith’s respective factual and entertainment multiplatform commissioning roles will close. It also follows the departure of shorts commissioner Isaac Densu, who left to join youth music brand SBTV in February after a year.

Around half of All 4’s 15-strong editorial team of online producers are also understood to be at risk of redundancy as a result of the changes.

C4 offered a clue to its plans in late April when it advertised for a Collections commissioning editor to help with the “transformation” of All 4.

…

Digital departures

Gee and Smith, who are expected to leave over the summer, have worked at C4 for 13 and 10 years respectively.

Factual multiplatform commissioner Gee was responsible for Embarrassing Bodies’ multiplatform output, Hugh’s Fish Fight and music amnesty campaign Don’t Stop The Music. He has collected an array of Bafta, RTS, Broadcast Digital and Emmy Awards.

He has commissioned over 25 short-form series since All 4 was established including My Pop Up Restaurant and Naked and Invisible, which has notched up over 6m YouTube views. He has also overseen digital shorts including Tattoo Twists, which led to E4 format Tattoo Fixers, and Drones In Forbidden Zones, the inspiration for C4’s Hidden Britain By Drone.

“I have loved every minute at Channel 4 and couldn’t respect its values more,” said Gee. “It has been a pleasure and a privilege to help establish Channel 4 as the world leader in TV-centred multiplatform; to set up and run the innovative and impactful IdeasFactory creative talent scheme when I first arrived; and most recently to get the channel’s short-form originals offer up and running with a distinctly C4 voice.”

…

 

Davidson-Houston thanked the pair for their “huge contributions to Channel 4’s reputation for innovation” in a note to staff. “They have boldly gone where no one has gone before,” he added.

The broadcaster will be looking to build on strong foundations. After launching All 4 around 12 months ago, digital revenues have rocketed to £82m, up 30% from 2014’s figure of £63m.

BBC3 logo

I’m just about to go to Farringdon for a meeting at Maker Studios and noticed while preparing that there isn’t much clear blue water between the logo of Disney-owned Maker and the new BBC3 logo announced earlier this month. What makes the similarity particularly striking is that in many ways the two organisations are now direct competitors with both’s emphasis on online video.

New BBC3 logo

 

I have a vague memory of seeing something like this as an earlier version – I heard there was a last minute failure of nerve at which point the ! appeared

Getting into your Shorts

Example thumbnails for Channel 4 shorts

Tattoo Twists series image

Tattoo Twists episode image

Tattoo Twists episode image

Drones in Forbidden Zones

Futurgasm series image

Futurgasm episode image

24 Hour Party Politics