AIDC 2024: Pilots vs development

In the business of getting new TV ideas to screen, there are not many options for producers who have ‘paper formats’ -untried, and untested concepts.

Most networks prefer new formats to have been proven performers elsewhere.

But public broadcasters, speaking this week at the Australian International Documentary Conference, still waved the flag for development funding.

Julie Hanna, Commissioning Editor at ABC said, “We are one of the only networks that develops things from paper to screen. Like we are doing that.”

Kirk Docker (You Can’t Ask That) from Docker Media agreed.

“For me, ABC is one of the very small pools of places where you can take a completely new idea and a format. If you sell a format to the ABC, then you can sell that format around the world to other networks. If you select format to Netflix and it’s worldwide, you might only get one go at it,” he said.

“It’s nice for the ego to be worldwide, but you don’t get that many sales around the world potentially, if that’s what you want. So there’s different advantages with where it goes. But yeah, in terms of getting something up completely original, not acquired from overseas, I feel like the ABC is one of the small places in Australia you can go to.”

Joseph Maxwell, Head of Unscripted at SBS, also commented on whether SBS had any equivalent of 10’s Pilot Week.

“I think for us part of the challenge is a Pilot is pretty expensive to go and do. We’ve got a limited amount of funds… but we really actively develop and I would say half of all developments fall by the wayside. We’re really happy to go ‘You know what, we’ve given it a go.’ Once we’ve got those successful shows then we really want to go more into series with that rather than do a pilot week per se,” he said.

Both ABC and SBS this week announced new funding initiatives in the documentary space.