Fresh off the back of the runaway success of Quiet on Set, the boss of Investigation Discovery (ID) has said the network is matching streamers on true crime budgets.
Jason Sarlanis, who runs the Warner Bros. Discovery network, recalled a time when “Netflix was aggressively over-paying” in the true crime space, noting that “they would be the first to admit they wanted to dominate in the space.”
But he said ID is these days willing to match on spend. “With [David] Zaslav behind us we are told, ‘You need to get hits don’t let money get in the way,’ so we have been going toe to toe with every streamer in competitive bidding situations,” Sarlanis told Content London.
At the same time, he said ID’s deep-seated knowledge and experience in the space has allowed the channel to “find gems” that the streamers aren’t chasing.
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He flagged Quiet on Set, the hit Nickelodeon investigation that generated headlines aplenty. At first, he said this would have appeared like classic Netflix fare but he had in fact been keen to tell the story since he took on the role. The show spoke to the former Keeping up the Kardashians exec’s instructions when he joined ID to imbue “pop culture sensibilities” into the shows he commissioned.
“These shows brings new viewers to our brand and change the perception of the brand,” he said. “There’s been an explosion in this genre with 18 buyers in the U.S. alone hyper-focused on true crime so we have to be aggressive if we want to be the originator by following trends and setting trends.”
One trend is the one-off event doc, which Sarlanis said is acting as a “gateway into our brand” for those less familiar with ID, with 30% of their viewership coming from people who have never watched the channel. These events also work across the three prongs of linear, streaming and globally, he added. Along with ID, Sarlanis also looks after the ID true crime originals that stream on Max and Discovery+, such as Quiet on Set.
Aaron Hernandez show
With this in mind, he unveiled a two-hour premiere special for ID’s Murder Under the Friday Night Lights strand about Aaron Hernandez.
The former New England Patriots player was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Odin Lloyd in 2015 and then indicted for a different double homicide while on trial. He was acquitted after a 2017 trial but five days later found dead in his cell, ruled a suicide. The special episode will reveal a chilling pattern of violence that began in Hernandez’s youth and carried throughout his football career and his affliction with a severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Sarlanis said the investigation “reveals the disturbing connections between Hernandez and two other murderers from his high school football team, exposing deeper issues in their upbringing that may have influenced their paths.”
Featuring cases from across the country with first-hand accounts from those who knew these crimes, each episode of Murder Under the Friday Night Lights shows how an off-the-field tragedy can have ramifications that tarnish the beloved sport.