Inside The Independent’s TV Ambitions

The British digital-only news site The Independent is getting into the documentary business. Over the last few weeks, the publisher has started shopping around two separate six-part documentaries to U.K. agency groups in search of brands to sponsor its shows. One series covers how the global post-pandemic reset impacts individuals’ personal finances, while another is focused on sports. In a year’s time, The Independent plans to have a weekly schedule of films that are brand-sponsored or sold to TV commissioners and streaming platforms. Moving to a broadcast model “We’re making the leap from a text-based publisher of news, to a digital news publisher to a broadcast model,” said managing director Christian Broughton. “We’re building the next-generation approach to an online TV channel, it’s about content, user experience and the distribution.” News publishers have had a spotty history with their video investments over the years. Initiatives like Facebook’s ill-fated pivot to video drove publishers towards growing off-site audiences, spinning up lower-quality, user-generated videos. Others burned through production budgets too quickly while waiting for monetization to follow. Some media outlets like The Economist's films unit and The Guardian have created award-winning documentary films, some of which are ad-funded, but agencies say the genre makes it tricky for brands to find the right alignment. “The best docs are the controversial ones,” points out Laura Wade, vice president EMEA, content and innovations at agency Essence. Video is already a seven figure-video stream As part of its video ambitions, in December The Independent launched a distinct video hub called Independent TV to house all of its video, including documentaries and news-related video from the wires. One of The Independent's early forays into documentary-making is this seven-minute film from its Moscow correspondent, Oliver Carroll, who opted to take Russia’s Sputnik vaccine in January. The newsroom has been staffing up with reporters with a filmmaking background, including former football correspondent for ESPN, Melissa Reddy, and former BBC Newsnight economics editor Ben Chu. “The polish, the narrative, the structure, skills for shooting and editing, all of it has risen substantially within the last three months,” said Broughton. The publisher is confident in its broadcasting bets, because online video revenue is already a seven figure-video stream. It clocks 50 million monthly video views on its owned and operated properties, where it can charge higher ad rates than video distributed on social platforms, said Broughton. That health extends to the best of its business, but it wasn’t always the case. The title had years of making a loss before cutting its print edition in 2016. In 2015, revenue was just over £8 million ($11 million). In 2020, it’s grown to over £30 million ($41.2 million), with profit growing 18% year-on-year. “What makes The Independent case important, and its profitability reassuring, is that it is a rare example of a national newsbrand going online-only. It is not a native start-up, but in the last four years, it has behaved like one,” according to a report by Enders Analysis. Broadcasters are hungry for co-pros Even so, the Independent is up against stiff competition. Because of the pandemic-induced limitations on revenue impacting broadcast, the bigger channels and streamers are much more open to co-creating and cofunding content with brands than ever before, saturating the space. When films “come with the narrative, it narrows the possibilities of finding a match with a brand,” said Nick Wright, managing director at Havas Entertainment, who said Havas in the U.K. hasn’t found a match with a publisher’s film. That appeal for brands is narrowed if publishers rely on their own in-house teams for production, which tend to have a similar style. “The broadcast world has moved on to co-creating the content together," said Wright. "I don’t know how appealing it is for a brand to sponsor a predetermined narrative in an arena that has less guaranteed viewership.” Even so, Independent TV is a means of building up the publisher's first-party data troves, a key component to its anonymous-to-known user strategy. “I understand that publishers need more video inventory for the data they can gain from audience consumption,” said Wade, “but it’s not an easy win in terms of incremental revenue.” On track to grow revenue by 20% The publisher is still mostly ad-funded, but it's becoming more diversified, driven by the growth of digital services, video revenue and international expansion. When current CEO Zach Leonard joined in 2010, 90% of the publisher's revenue came from advertising, the rest from licensing. Now, advertising is more like 60%, with 25% from content sales, 5% subscriptions, the rest new digital products and services, like Independent TV. According to Leonard, the publisher is on track to grow revenue by 20%, thanks to a laser focus on its audience data strategy, which it admits is further behind some competitors. These characteristics feel especially robust for a £30 million ($41.2 million) business, according to the Enders Analysis report. The publisher didn’t specify any acquisition targets—it's reportedly in the market—but in terms of partnerships, Leonard said it is “looking at tech companies that can get us there quicker.” Brand Appetite Around Green Thinking Is Growing for The Financial Times

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‘Making the Leap to a Broadcast Model:’ Inside The Independent's TV Ambitions

The publisher's video revenue is already a seven-figure business

Moving to a broadcast model

Lucinda Southern

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