The success of the documentary genre in the 80s and 90s on all channels led to some interesting soul-searching among advertisers. They discovered prime-time documentaries attracted the most valuable metropolitan ABC-one aspirational audience.
All observational documentaries are inquisitive films with a definite, often local, point of view or message. They are called observational because they watch or follow events rather than construct narratives for events to follow. But they are expensive of time and effort to make.
They do not usually have predictable outcomes.
And they are often difficult to view.
So observational documentaries are time-consuming, unpredictable and so,
difficult for broadcasters to schedule.
In any channel low-rating documentaries are always going to be under pressure. The reasons behind this pressure are largely technological.
For example Channel Four was born into an era of relative channel scarcity; of primitive home computers; of no practical mobile phones, and no emails.
But just two years after its launch the Cable and Broadcasting Act ushered in a new multi-channel era.
Today, that ABC-one aspirational audience for documentaries has plenty competing for its television-watching time, and every supplier of media – not just television – wants it.
Documentaries are changing.
A new appetite among young cinema-goers for ‘long-form’ documentaries is breathing new life into the genre.
And a new ‘short form’ is taking shape on the web.
It is beginning to look like a new beginning.
Welcome to FourDocs, perhaps the third golden age of documentary.
