Nat Geo Wild, Arte and CCTV reach out to Earth Touch for blue-chip wildlife content

Arte has licensed one-off special India’s Lion Queen

LONDON TV SCREENINGS: Five international broadcasters across Europe and Asia – Nat Geo Wild, Arte (France), RTVE (Spain), KBS (Korea) and CCTV (China) – have secured package deals with UK wildlife and factual entertainment producer Earth Touch.

National Geographic Wild (NGW) is taking 35 hours of premium, blue-chip wildlife programming for its international feed, to be delivered over the next three years.

The programming will be a mix of Earth Touch-produced titles and coproductions with indie producers.

Earth Touch will have worldwide distribution rights to all 35 hours of programming following NGW’s exclusivity period.

The first six hours of NGW’s 1×50’ specials are already in production for delivery before October. These include Monkey Wars, which details the lives of gelada baboons in Ethiopia’s Simien mountains, and China’s Killer Hornets, revealing the dangers posed by the apex predators of the insect world.

A further six hours are in production and slated for later this year, including Croc Wars, Big Cat Planet and the 3×60’ series Strangest Nature.

Also at this week’s London TV Screenings, Arte has taken four hours of programming, including one-off specials India’s Lion Queen and Secret Ways of a Whale Shark, and RTVE in Spain has a 14-hour package, including India’s Lion Queen, Day of the Dragon and the 4×60’ series Epic Yellowstone.

Earth Touch has also sold programming to two leading Asian national broadcasters. KBS picked up 12 hours, including Legends of Venom, Australia’s Land of the Ancients and Africa’s River Titans, and Chinese state broadcaster CCTV will air 10 hours of Earth Touch documentaries, including Crocodiles Revealed, Legends of Venom and the 3×60’ series Wild Belgium.

Chris Fletcher, Earth Touch’s director of sales and coproductions, said: “In spite of the difficulties currently facing international factual distributors, these deals show that the appetite for premium-quality blue-chip natural history programming remains as strong as ever.

“We are proud to have longstanding relationships with a number of key global broadcasters and to continue being a source of curiosity-sparking, engaging documentary work which audiences keep coming back for.”