Documentary Television Market: What are the Key Growth Factors?

Now-a-days, people are more inclined towards watching programs with real life events, as it expands their knowledge base and makes them more informed. The number of viewers with critical thinking, as well as their weekly frequency of watching documentaries is growing. The increasing variety in documentaries across various genres is attracting new types of viewer base with varying tastes.

Pay TV, also referred as subscription television and premium television is a television service, provided by both analog and digital cable satellite television. The pay television (Pay TV) market has been expanding globally, which is adding subscription revenues to the broadcasting companies. The global pay TV market expanded from $143 billion in 2010, and reached $203 billion in 2014. The documentary television market is also benefitting from the growth of the pay TV market. There are several companies offering a separate channel for documentaries. The number of subscribers for such channels is increasing.

Earlier, documentaries were considered to be a subject of interest for people in higher age groups, as they were mostly designed on a serious note. However, now-a-days people from lower age groups, especially between 11 - 18 years are inclining towards watching documentaries. The involvement of youth towards political happenings is encouraging the documentary producers to make their content more contemporary. The transformation in the documentary production with the incorporation of new interactive technologies has been attracting viewers from all age groups. This is boosting the revenue of the documentary television market.

With the increasing awareness about self-identity, people of several races and ethnicities have started showing interest in TV programs with cultural content. This is also attracting the attention of documentary producers and they are starting to involve themselves more into documentary of such sub-genres. The major types of race-based documentaries include White, Latino, Asian and Black. The recent documentaries in this sub-genre include "White People" by MTV, a part of Viacom Music and Entertainment Group and "Corsican Nationalism" by France 24.

The demand for region specific documentaries has been increasing, which is encouraging the companies to produce more documentaries with local content. This is expected to provide growth opportunities for the broadcasters, who are looking forward to increase the number of locally produced documentaries. The broadcasting companies are also expanding their distribution network to newer countries, where they are focusing to air more numbers of documentaries with local content.

The major companies in the global documentary television market include Time Warner Inc., Discovery Communications Inc., British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), Al Jazeera Media Network, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), AMC Networks Inc., News Corporation, France 24, and CBS Corporation.