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Why NBC Decided to Bring Natural History to Broadcast TV With ‘The Americas’
NBCU's Toby Gorman and BBC's Michael Gunton on why NBC decided to bring natural history to broadcast TV with 'The Americas.'
Back in the early days of the broadcast networks, natural history shows were a part of the programming diet: NBC ran “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” for much of the 1960s, and around that time ABC brought “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” to U.S. audiences. With a few exceptions (Fox’s “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey”), the broadcast nets have shied away from documentary-style nature events — which makes NBC’s current stab at one, “ The Americas,” all the more notable. “It was a big play for them,” says executive producer Mike Gunton, the creative director at BBC’s Natural History Unit, whose recent credits include Apple TV+’s “Prehistoric Planet.” “From our perspective, it was an opportunity to speak to an audience on a scale that we’ve never really been able to do before.
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