Historian Dan Snow’s History Hit Acquired by All3Media’s Little Dot Studios

In today’s Global Bulletin, Little Dot buys Dan Snow’s History Hit; ITV and France Televisions order a 9/11 doc; Open City Doc Fest reveals its game plan; and Discovery Denmark commissions Snowman.

ACQUISITION

All3Media-owned Little Dot Studios is acquiring broadcaster and historian Dan Snow’s platform History Hit. The acquisition is will create an integrated history network, linking Little Dot Studios’ existing factual AVOD channels like Timeline and Absolute History with History Hit’s SVOD channel, podcasts and online communities as well as events and book publishing.

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Snow will exclusively work with History Hit and All3Media’s Little Dot Studios to create new online and broadcast content. Little Dot acquired sports production studio Wing earlier this year.

Andy Taylor, co-founder and CEO of Little Dot Studios, said: “Together with History Hit, we will have the largest history audience on digital platforms globally and acquiring this brilliant platform will give us not only one of the world’s most recognised historians in Dan Snow, but also the team who are delivering high quality, prestige content which is attracting a fast-growing subscriber base.”

“Little Dot is the perfect home for us,” Snow added. “They are best in the business at attracting gigantic audiences online through their world beating YouTube channels. It is a killer combination. Together we are going to transform the way people watch and listen; always innovating, but never forgetting that the key is giving our hugely sophisticated, highly engaged audience what they struggle to find elsewhere: high quality history.”

9/11 DOCUMENTARY

ITV and France Televisions have commissioned Zinc Media Group’s factual producer Brook Lapping to make a 90-minute documentary on 9/11. The documentary, with the working title “9/11: We Have Some Planes,” will feature previously unheard audio and images from that day, and will also tell the story of how the authorities reacted, coped and tried to regain control over events.

The recordings are gathered from military command centers, frontline emergency services, government conference calls, air traffic control, commercial airlines, private phone calls and public broadcasts.

Greg Sanderson, interim managing director of Zinc Television London, said: “With access to hundreds of hours of unheard footage and audio, which was previously locked in archives under great security, we can help paint a fuller picture of that historic day.”

Tom Giles, commissioning editor at ITV, added: “ITV and Brook Lapping worked together memorably on the 10th anniversary with the landmark ‘9/11: Day That Changed The World.’ Now, with access to a wealth of new material previously unseen, this film will immerse the viewer in a moment that we still have much to learn about 20 years since it changed the world.”

DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL

London’s Open City documentary festival will unspool online (Sept. 9-15) for its 10th edition.

The festival will feature 48​ ​new non-fiction​ films​, 10​ cross-media projects​, and ​three​ audio documentaries​ from 28 countries. Of the directors presenting new work in the film programs, ​54%​ ​are​ women ​or non-binary filmmakers. Awards will be given in four categories: the Open City award, the U.K. short film award, the emerging filmmaker award and the new international short film award.

Nominated for the ​emerging filmmaker Award ​are ​Maya Kosa and Sergio da Costa for “Bird Island,” Elvis Sabin Ngaïbino for “Makongo,” Gu Xue for “The Choice,” Sindhu Thirumalaisamy for “The Lake and the Lake.”

Among the festival’s special events, ‘Terra Femme: Women and the Travelogue Archives​’ will see filmmaker ​Courtney Stephens​ will present a selection of home travelogues shot by women during the 1920s-40s, exploring the historical context of these amateur films that occupy a space between home-movie and accidental ethnography. And, commissioned specially for the festival, in ‘​The Congress of Idling Persons,’​ artist and writer​ Bassem Saad​ will take a look at the centrality of life and death in Russia, Lebanon and the U.S., examining instances where groups or populations have practiced radical forms of healthcare.

COMMISSION

Discovery Network Denmark has commissioned Red Arrows Studios-backed Snowman Productions, best know for global hit format “Married at First Sight,” to produce new unscripted adventure series “Klædt af mod toppen med familien Wozniacki” (“Undressed to the Top with the Wozniacki Family”).