France’s RMC Story looking for mystery documentaries

Volcans : Menace sur l’Europe

French factual broadcaster RMC Story, part of the Altice Group, is currently looking to co-produce mystery documentaries through the group’s production and content arm RMC Production. 

That can be all kind of mysteries, for instance about Jesus or Cleopatra, RMC Story and Découverte director, Stéphane Sallé de Chou, told TBI. He added that the broadcaster is also looking to co-produce catastrophe documentaries, in sync with the new strands that lately launched on the channel.

Factual DTT channel RMC Story had a primetime schedule lift lately in order to clarify its daily evening offering, he explained at a Sunny Side of the Doc conference. The channel has been building weekly strands around mysteries, catastrophes, leisure, crime and paranormal. As opposed to older sister RMC Découverte, which key-targets men under 50 with technology, adventure, motors, construction docs and/or formats, RMC Story has a more investigative approach and targets more female as well as male viewers aged 25 to 49.

Among RMC Story’s recent successes, Sallé de Chou mentioned a US documentary from Reelz, CIA vs Bin Laden in which the channel got involved upfront via its division RMC Productions, along 25 international partners. RMC Production just also had a success on the catastrophe strand this Monday with its in-house produced doc, Volcans : Menace sur l’Europe. 

The group has been developing production and content arm RMC Productions over the past couple of years, handling pre-buys and international co-productions for the channels as well as initiating its own docs, that can be domestic or international, with the company then looking for partners on the international market.

About 37 hours were produced in 2021, up to 80 hours this year. RMC Story and Decouverte also work with independent French producers, who supply the majority of the French documentaries broadcast.