Why NBC Natural History brought to broadcast TV with ‘America’
In the early days of the broadcast networks, natural history shows were part of the programming diet: NBC ran a large part of the 1960s “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom”, and around that time ABC brought “the Ondezese world of Jacques Cousteau” to the American public. In recent decades, however, such programs usually became the domain of PBS (“nature”) and cables such as Discovery (“Planet Earth”). More recently, streamers such as Netflix (“Our Planet”) entered the space.
With a few exceptions (FOX’s “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey”), the broadcasting nets have been removed from natural events in documentary-style-valor The current sting of NBC one, “North and South America”, all the more remarkable. “It’s an experiment,” says Toby Gorman, the president of Universal Television Alternative Studio. “We will learn a lot. But when I think of the hits of broadcast, it must be four quadrant,” he adds, referring to the need to touch every demography. “We talk a lot about it in our world, and I can’t think of anything that defines ‘four-quadrant’ better than a large, blue-chip natural history project.”
Told by Tom Hanks and a score by Hans Zimmer, the 10-episodes “The Americas” debuted on February 23 and continues every week until 13 April. Produced by BBC Studios Natural History Unit-De T Smingle behind epic events such as “Planet Earth”-The series is split into different regions of interest, including the Amazon, Mexico, the Gulf Coast, Patagonia and the West Coast. The ambitious shoot took place in five years and 180 expeditions. Gorman believes that it is the most expensive non -described company in the NBC history. So far, the series has reached more than 20 million viewers through its runs on NBC and Peacock and is the most viewed new alternative show of the season so far.
“It was a big game for them,” says executive producer Mike Gunton, the creative director of the Natural History Unit of BBC, whose recent credits are “prehistoric planet” of Apple TV+. “From our perspective, it was a chance to talk to an audience on a scale that we have never been able to do before. The streamers and cable networks are not a niche, but if you are on a factual channel, it will reach a certain subset of the audience. This is a complete, cross-genre broadcast.”
The idea for ‘America’ came when Gorman first arrived at NBCUIVERSALLE. Conversations took place about the development of a large nature history event at the company – the kind that could then live on a streamer (which was not even announced as Pauw at that time). Coincidentally, Gunton just started pitching a project on the North and South American continents, from top to bottom.
“I thought, there is something that has the same ambition as ‘Planet Earth’ that I could do,” he says. That is when focusing on America came up in me. “I started to think, wait a minute, it has everything. It has all the superlatives. It has the longest river, the oldest, biggest trees, the biggest this, the fastest that.”
Gorman says they are inspired by the scope of the Gunton field. “The strategy was very clear from the start that if NBCUIversal would take on this space, it had to do it bigger and better than previously done,” he says. “And Mike would tell you, this is the largest he did, and he did a lot of big things. So it was just to swing for the fences, to invest and hope that we not only entertain America about America, but also entertain the world.”
NBC has since ordered the eight-episodes “Surviving Earth”, which uses digital technology to re-create the prehistoric era, although the series, announced for the first time in 2022, has not yet received an airdate (but Execs confirms that it is still on the docket). Gorman hopes that “North and South America” will produce similar projects on NBC.
“I don’t know that we will go as big as we have gone because we really wanted to get out of the gates,” he says. “A production period of five years is clearly only an incredible amount of time for each project. But we will certainly start talking about how we would follow this. We would like to keep the chance to do more, but it is a big conversation because of the required dedication.”
