AMCNI's Sam Rowden seeks expert-led true crime on a budget

Source: C21Media

LONDON SCREENINGS: Sam Rowden, VP of the Content Group of AMC Networks International UK, talks through her original true-crime commissioning mission in the UK, while outlining her priorities for the EMEA arm of the business.

In July last year, AMC Networks International UK (AMCNI UK) promoted Sam Rowden to the newly created position of VP of its new content group.

Reporting to Kevin Dickie, exec VP and MD of AMCNI-UK, the promotion gave Rowden full responsibility for both the linear and streaming content strategies across the UK and EMEA, which includes oversight of joint-venture channels CBS Justice, CBS Europa, CBS Reality, RealityXtra, Legend and HorrorXtra, as well as channel brands AMC and SundanceTV.

Her remit also includes AMCNI UK's AVoD and FAST portfolio, consisting of AVoD service CBS Catch Up Channels UK and FAST channel True Crime, which recently launched on Amazon's Freevee and Rakuten TV and is also available via ITVX.

Then, in October, several of those channels got a new look. Factual entertainment channel CBS Reality was renamed True Crime, while AVoD platform and FAST channel True Crime from CBS Reality became True Crime UK. It sits alongside entertainment channel Legend, which features action, sci-fi, adventure and western series and movies, and which was renamed from Horror Channel in 2022. On-demand content from both True Crime and Legend is available on CBS Catch Up Channels UK, which became Watch Free UK. Other channels in the portfolio that will be rebranded include Legend Xtra and True Crime Xtra, and time-shifted versions Legend Xtra +1 and True Crime +1.

Rowden says: "The greatest benefit has been having one person with oversight of all our brands across the AMC London office. This has brought new opportunities to deliver our content across different services and to a broader audience. It has also allowed more efficiencies across workflow, content selection and negotiating of deals within the UK office and across the broader AMC company as a whole."

Acquisitions are made across the portfolio, but original commissions - around eight to 10 series a year including renewals - are exclusively for the True Crime channel in the UK (formerly CBS Reality).

"We've been in the true-crime genre for 11 years and it was a good move to align the content and offering of the channel with a say-what-it-is brand name for people to find in a busy environment," Rowden says. "True-crime is very much more a female audience while Legend is a channel very specifically targeted to the male 50-plus audience that thrives on nostalgia and people re-watching things they've seen before for comfort viewing.

"For our True Crime originals, we pride ourselves on being expert-led. We wouldn't front a show with an actor or somebody who has played a role in dramas of true crime. It's about the professional experts. That's not always possible in our acquisitions as we're not driving the creative there, but on our commissions," she says.

"We're looking for murder cases. For us it's all about a really detailed lens and expert analysis. The aim of True Crime is to be an expert-led channel. It's about hearing from people on the ground who really know what it takes to solve a crime."

Recent originals that have worked well include Killers Caught on Camera, a 20×60' coproduction between UK prodco Back2Back, Canada's Blue Ant Media and US-based Filmrise. That's in production on season two. "What made it stand out was it looked and felt very different because it was heavily based on CCTV, found footage, doorbell and dashcam footage... It brought the investigation and cases to life with the viewers feeling part of it and viewing what happened," Rowden says.

Bloodline Detectives, meanwhile, is about technological advances in US cold cases and the show has been a win with viewers, while Murder By The Sea is in production for a ninth and 10th seasons. MacIntyre: Killer Evidence is also the latest in a long partnership between AMCNI UK and the investigative journalist, who fronted its first original commission.

Another recent greenlight is the second season of The Truth About My Murder from Yeti TV, with another 10 hours arriving on True Crime in early 2024, once again featuring forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd.

"It's great to have shows that work and return but it's the balance of bringing new things to the channel to draw new people in as well. We're in that struggle between having things that are working but that brings down the number of new titles we can have as well," Rowden says.

While serialised true-crime, open-ended series on miscarriages of justice, and mysteries that stay unresolved have worked elsewhere, particularly for streamers like Netflix, Rowden's True Crime audience isn't so keen.

"We have done serialised docs, but we tend to do three hours rather than stretching out towards six - there aren't many cases that warrant being told over six hours, it's an awfully long time and if there isn't a satisfying resolution at the end the viewer can feel they haven't spent their time well," she explains. "We know our true-crime audience really well and we know a key thing is they like a resolution and some justice at the end of what they're watching. If we do a serialised offering it has to have a good resolution at the end of it," she says.

"We had a series called Wrongly Accused that was in the wrongful conviction space, but for us we had to find a way that fits with what we know our audience loves. For the format, we did a two-hour structure: the first hour very much the original investigation and wrongful conviction, then we took it a stage further and delivered a second hour to complete the circle."

That series was one of Rowden's global commissions that was also taken by parent AMC to air on AMC+ and SundanceNow in the US. Wrongfully Accused was the first done in that way and there are more to come, she says.

At this week's London TV Screenings, the focus is very much on acquisitions for outside the UK market. Programming, acquisitions and planning execs from AMC's Spanish office in Madrid and Hungarian office will join as well as a few from the US. "For us the London TV Screenings are not necessarily impacting the UK business but have huge benefit on what we look at outside the UK and the other AMC business units," Rowden says.

Territories being shopped for include Poland, where CBS Reality is the unscripted brand, and then there are three movie channels: male orientated AMC which takes action, horror and sci-fi; CBS Europa which is part of a joint venture with Paramount Global and has a female audience focused on rom-coms, comedy and drama; and the more highbrow SundanceTV. In Africa, there are two brands: CBS Reality for unscripted and CBS Justice, focused on true-crime. There are also CBS Reality feeds for Romania and Middle East/North Africa (MENA).

"The London Screenings are useful for us," Rowden says. "We tend to buy less UK content because it's a competitive market and the rights aren't available, but it's good to know what's coming through, new trends that will affect our strategy down the line. But it's mainly for our EMEA portfolio outside the UK where we can pick up content made by our competitors and license for Africa, Poland and Romania.

"Reality is the biggest genre we acquire outside of the UK. Larger than life characters, fly-on-the-wall crazy jobs, real-life stories around hoarding and those sort of things. That content would be something we're looking at from the London Screenings."

The CBS Reality channel is dominated in daytime by courtroom series Judge Judy, which is picked up from the joint-venture, but in acquisitions shows like Border Patrol and Border Security are always in demand.

Now looking mainly for acquisitions for 2025, with 2024 all but wrapped up, the difficult economy isn't challenging Rowden and her team as much as some other commissioners, primarily because budgets were always relatively small.

"On the originals side our budgets have remained the same for this year, we're looking at commissioning eight to 10 series. Not everybody is in the same position on the commissioning front so it's a positive for us," Rowden says.

"We've always been quite a lean and low budget company anyway. Being creative is what we have to do. With our budgets, compared to the huge array of other channels now doing true-crime, we need to get creative on making our shows look as great as they do on screen.

"We've looked at different models and commissioning higher episode counts - such as 20 episodes or two seasons together to get that efficiency of production costs. We're in the market for different funding models, distributors and partners across the US, looking at bringing in funding from other areas as well to bring these deals together and be able to keep going.

"It does take longer on the commissioning side. It is taking longer because you sit down with an idea you absolutely love but have to work out how to make it work in this climate. We're increasing episode counts and that's a risk. It's a new idea, we love it - but do we love it enough to throw ourselves in for 20 episodes? That's the only way we can see to work through it. We've got to feel confident with the choices we make and the production companies we're doing them with. Not everybody can work on those tight budgets and deliver on what it looks like - it's an art.

"We're having to be flexible, prodcos are having to be flexible, bringing in partners and being more open minded on where the funding is coming from."