Ups & Downs of National Geographic
Introduction
National Geographic (formerly the National Geographic Magazine and branded also as NAT GEO) is the official magazine of the National Geographic Society. It has been published continuously since its first issue in 1888, nine months after the Society itself was founded. It primarily contains articles about science, geography, history, and world culture. The magazine is known for its thick square-bound glossy format with a yellow rectangular border and its extensive use of dramatic photographs. Controlling interest in the magazine has been held by The Walt Disney Company since 2019.
The magazine is published monthly, and additional map supplements are also included with subscriptions. It is available in a traditional printed edition and through an interactive online edition. On occasion, special editions of the magazine are issued.
As of 2015, the magazine was circulated worldwide in nearly 40 local-language editions and had a global circulation of approximately 6.5 million per month according to data published by The Washington Post (down from about 12 million in the late 1980s) or 6.7 million according to National Geographic. This includes a US circulation of 3.5 million.
The Ups & Downs of National Geographic
Since the National Geographic featuring year in 1888, the best part of the culture such as conservation, education, science and exploration has been dedicated by society of philanthropic. The magazine has reached one million readers until 1925 that also has been used as a school educational references and resources by the teachers and entertainment by the home people. Since the National Geographic has launched in 1997 in Europe in television channels which is partnership with Fox media network by Rupert Murdoch, they got many spectacular success. They bring the National Geographic brand into 500 million homes within 171 countries, provide money of 10 million dollars to help the poor annually even though they having the shrinking membership subscriptions profit.
National Geographic was having a crisis on their own brand identity at the starting of 2015. The TV started to chase them with low-rent reality shows. Their event of future apocalyptic was condemned by reviewers for the sake to glorify their jaundiced world views. The show called Diggers says that the society reputation and icon culture that most people know will be weak as if they promoting the looting and support the destruction of sites of archaeological. This made the Magazine of National Geographic start to suffer.
In order to prevent from this issue become more complex, one-time marketing executive for HBO, Monroe said that they are having a lot of success because the made low-cost, male-skewing reality shows and chase the non-fiction audiences such as History and Discovery. Monroe also presented the new vision to the board as to increase their determination on making National Geographic as a successful magazine and TV show. As a result, the cable channel used as a high-quality and ground-breaking television. That vision was already driven towards fruition as Disney bought National Geographic’s TV channels, studios, magazine and other media operation which cost about 71.3 billion of 21st Century Fox.
Other than having an identity crisis, National Geographic’s shows also not so well-known on 3 years ago before their brand is getting popular through this entire world because there were only few shows that were still on the air. This is all said by Monroe, the National Geographic Global Television Networks new president. Commission of flagship drove by the emphasis of quality over quantity. It shows the life story on Earth from 8 astronaut perspective and cinema such Bafta- and Oscar-winning Free Solo.
There’s also been a move into scripted drama “very strictly fact-based,” insists Monroe — “you will never see a show like Game of Thrones on National Geographic.” A mini-series about the origins of the Ebola virus is scheduled for May, while an adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff has been green-lit as a potentially long-running series, where each season focuses on a different space mission.
“Disney is going to enable us to turbocharge our business,” Monroe says. “We have a creatively ambitious vision for our programming and we do have bigger budgets, we’re taking bigger, bolder swings. Can we always compete with the Netflixes and Amazons and Apples? No, they have huge cheque books but I think that when film-makers come to us, they get something that is often more impactful and more meaningful than big cheques.”
For the National Geographic, television act as the essential element towards the output in the society since 1960s. It started with a production of series and unique unit special for CBS in United States which most of it internationally shown. Pioneers such as the French marine explorer Jacques Cousteau and British chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall were filmed by National Geographic and went on to become globally famous.
When the society went into partnership with Fox in 1997, there was some grumbling, which only grew louder when a further deal was struck in 2015, handing more of National Geographic over to Fox. The group was split into a commercial business and a continuing non-profit society. The society received $725m towards its endowment fund and retained a 27 per cent share in the business. The joint venture, National Geographic Partners, took charge of all its media assets, from the TV network to the magazine. Fox owned the controlling 73 per cent stake, which would later be sold to Disney.
Chief among the anxieties was how a Fox-backed National Geographic would treat global warming, given that Rupert Murdoch himself is an avowed sceptic. Polar explorer Ben Saunders, who in 2013–14 completed an unsupported trek to the South Pole, says he had “massive” misgivings about the deal, “partly because of Murdoch’s views on climate change”.
“I’ve walked four and a half thousand miles now, either in the high Arctic or in Antarctica. I’ve spent more time there than most career climate scientists will and the scale and the rate at which they’re changing is obvious to the naked eye. I was really uneasy when I first heard about this happening in 2015. But from what I’ve seen, they haven’t shied away from those stories.”
As Susan Goldberg, editorial director of National Geographic Partners and editor-in-chief of National Geographic Magazine, says: “People care about what happens at National Geographic. I have always felt very strongly that we need to be a go-to authority on the environment, we’re on the side of science, we’re on the side of facts and we’re on the side of the planet. That didn’t change under Fox, and I don’t expect it to change in the future.”
The landscape of televisual is positively inhabited by competitors. A series of wildlife animal, National Geographic’s Hostile Planet has just launched in US which is it must battle with Netflix’s Our Planet and others.
So how can National Geographic create venturesome programming that doesn’t compromise the seriousness of its brand? “I think Free Solo is a very good example of [a documentary] that is actually not dramatic in some ways but still is riveting and harrowing and visceral,” says the film’s co-director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. “Alex Honnold’s ambition was to free solo El Cap, we prayed every day there would be absolutely no complication involved in that. The point of the film was to make vivid his process and to try to delve into his character and that’s what added the drama to it.”
This sophisticated sense of drama represents a step forward from an era in adventure television where moments of crisis have been everything. “I can’t tell you how often we’ve been asked the question [by commissioners], ‘where’s the jeopardy?’ ” says marine biologist and presenter Monty Halls. “I think that’s a retrograde step. This need for danger can actually detract from celebrating environments for what they are.”
As Saunders notes, talks with a different channel about filming his epic polar journey broke down over that very issue. “They were seeking the one thing that I was absolutely trying to avoid, which was drama. They wanted to make good TV with cliffhangers and jeopardy and tears, all those things I was trying to avoid.”
Halls suggests that adventure TV represents an “aspirational vision of who you are”. And he is unconcerned at the idea of National Geographic becoming a Disney property. “I’m a dad of two little girls, aged seven and five, and I don’t think adventure should be this thing that is only inhabited by middle-aged white men with beards. Many explorers would quail at the thought of Disneyfying adventure, but if Disneyfying the natural world means more people see it, more people feel invested in it, then I’m all for it.”
Conclusion
This explanation shows that how National Geographic rise up from their fall, how they solve their problem and how they manage to use the platform of technology of television to make people well-known about their objective of producing the National Geographic magazine and TV shows.
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1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEo-ykjmHgg
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCWLtyTmX3o
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfhot7tQcWs
