In the Press

9/11: STATE OF EMERGENCY Premieres on HISTORY™
Thursday, September 9, at 9 p.m. ET

A Unique Insight into the Decisions and Challenges
Faced on September 11, 2001

Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers
are Among Those Interviewed

Los Angeles, CA – August 6, 2010 – On September 11, 2001 thousands faced the ultimate test of their judgment, courage and skill. From senior political leaders to ordinary men and women, 9/11: STATE OF EMERGENCY recounts the difficult split-second decisions people had to make on that day. The two-hour special premieres on Thursday, September 9, at 9 p.m. ET on HISTORY.

Through a minute-by-minute investigation of the day, 9/11: STATE OF EMERGENCY features some of the frankest and most detailed insider interviews ever filmed from former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Acting Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. The special emphasizes the challenges these high-level officials faced as they sought to remain calm and gain control of events in the middle of an unprecedented crisis.

In the most personal interview she has ever given about the events of 9/11, Condoleezza Rice reveals the shock, anger and frustration inside the White House bunker as internal governmental communications failed and rumors of new hijackings swamped air traffic control. Rice also exclusively reveals that in the chaotic aftermath of the first attacks, she had a heated telephone conversation with President Bush.

9/11: STATE OF EMERGENCY also includes a candid interview with Andrew Card as he explains the story behind one of the most iconic pieces of archive footage of 9/11 – the moment he broke into President Bush’s visit to the Emma E. Booker Elementary School

in Sarasota, Fla. to whisper the news that a second aircraft had hit the World Trade Center.

Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Myers recall the attack on the Pentagon, where Rumsfeld was present and assisted with casualties, and the struggle to readjust air force priorities and practices to cope with an attack from within the United States.

9/11 STATE OF EMERGENCY features interviews with air traffic controllers and F-16 pilots whose actions and decisions helped shape the day and also includes remarkable survival and rescue stories from inside the Towers and the Pentagon.

Additionally, the special features a conversation with Deena Burnett and Alice Hoglan, family members of passengers onboard Flight 93 who were able to speak to their loved ones and pass along information that helped passengers and crew decide to launch their fight-back, thus sparing Washington D.C. from a further attack.

911: STATE OF EMERGENCY is produced for HISTORY by Nutopia. David McKillop and Julian Hobbs are Executive Producers for HISTORY. Executive Producers for Nutopia are Phil Craig and Jane Root.

Press Contact:
Susan Ievoli/212-907-9447
Susan.ievoli@aetn.com

Big and brash – and British

Jane Root tells Maggie Brown how a new UK indie got to make a history of the US – in the US – and persuaded the president to endorse it

In her lengthy, high-profile career spanning the UK and US, Jane Root has always demonstrated an enviable talent for reinvention. So it is bang in character that her latest project is making waves. After three years at Discovery Networks (2004-07), and running BBC2 successfully before that, she founded Nutopia, an aspirationally named production company, with offices in Washington DC and London.
The result – and Nutopia’s first commission – is America: The Story of Us, for the History Channel cable network. The primetime series, which was screened for six weeks from late April, won endorsement from Barack Obama, but some critical disdain.
The 12-hour saga also launched with record ratings for the History Channel on 25 April – 5.7 million viewers – although subsequent audiences dropped. Stylistically, it is geared towards young adults.
When pitching the series, which cost around $15m to make, Root says that she drew directly on her experience of running BBC2 between 1998 and 2004.
In Britain, she added, we take it for granted that big factual series come along as automatic parts of the schedules – Blue Planet, Planet Earth et al. But in the US: “Here, they don’t happen.”
Root was at Discovery when it screened Planet Earth, a co-production from the BBC Natural History Unit, and saw the big impact it made and realised that ambitious (US-made) factual series were “one of the last bits of British broadcasting that had not made it to America”.
Her second guiding principle was formed earlier, when working in the 1980s and 1990s as a successful founder of independent producer Wall to Wall, before she switched to the BBC. “When you are an independent you think that little things will be easy to sell. But there is no shortage of delightful miniatures,” she says, and adds: “I always remember Peter Bazalgette pitching Restoration to me at BBC2 [event television in which viewers voted for which crumbling heritage building should get Lottery Funds]. Remember, it is easier to borrow $100m from the bank than $100.”
The danger, of course, is that if a big, primetime series doesn’t work, you are exposed. Root has had her flops: a Discovery version of BBC2’s Great Britons didn’t export well.
The History of Us took 18 months to produce, a dream commission because, unusually, it was fully funded by the privately owned History Channel, which then raced to get it on air.
The icing on the cake was Barack Obama. He was asked early on – as a long shot – to get involved. Then, suddenly, the president became interested in contributing a foreword – an endorsement of the series’s optimistic tone, how Americans are a resourceful people with a talent for reinvention.
This White House input is linked to the extra educational aspect of the series: boxed DVD sets are being sent to every US school – American-style public service broadcasting.
This deal has effectively provided the cash flow to provide Nutopia with a successful start. “In a way, this was the basis of the company,” confirms Root.
So the company has not needed large external backers, though a share stake might be sold at some stage. “I have always believed that if you make programmes exciting and dynamic, people will come,” says Root.
She resolutely doesn’t accept the dumbing-down case of those who think that today’s TV is all about entertainment. “People are interested in knowledge, and the internet has made so much more knowledge available. It was astonishing to me that there had been no big history of the US made since Alistair Cooke’s series [America: A Personal History of the United States in 1972-73].
But part of her pitch to the History Channel was about finding a way to make the series: emphatically “not your dad’s history programme”. That is certainly the case. Teenagers, I can confirm, will sit and watch it.
Show runner Ben Goold and team worked to establish an entertaining style that anyone fixated on playing video games and watching blockbusters would appreciate. The Kansas City Star critic said of the series: “It bounces off the four walls.”
However, Tom Shales of the Washington Post wrote that the programme “has flash but not creativity… Some reasonable amount of conceptual sophistication, and a good deal of huffery, puffery and gimmickry.”
To British ears it does seem over the top. A favourite line of the commentary, from narrator Liev Schreiber, is that this or that event would “transform the world forever… everything changed forever”.
But in making it, Root said she and her team were “really close partners with the History Channel. To do something on this scale, you have to be genuinely collaborative, you take on board what they need for their audience. They didn’t get to see the rushes, it was much more informal than that, but we were on the phone all the time, working together.”
Root says they had a big discussion about where to start the history. Eventually they decided on James Rolfe, who arrived in Jamestown in 1610 with tobacco seeds, to found the colony’s new agriculture. It does not gloss over the sordid treatment of Native Americans. Or slavery. There is plenty of British involvement and two British graphics companies, Jellyfish and Lola, had a big hand in the CGI.
Root remains in the US; her husband is studying at Georgetown University, Washington, and their daughter Molly, five, is settled at school. Perhaps only an outsider would have dared to think that Americans needed an accessible history of their country right now?
Root said: “I didn’t grow up with these stories at school. I come to them fresh. I didn’t know that Abraham Lincoln grew up in a log cabin, although every American child does. The History Channel must have thought ‘Oh my God’ about my ignorance. But it’s like 1066: in Britain you just know about the battle.”
The result is a series, undiluted by co-production considerations. It would probably be impossible for the BBC to screen it because The Story of Us is too American in its relentlessly celebratory approach and lack of a European sensibility. The History Channel will be showing an edited version in the UK.
As for the business side of Nutopia, non-executive directors include Peter Bazalgette, former creative director of Endemol Group, and Michael Jackson, the former BBC executive and CEO of Channel 4. Both men are investors.
“It’s an extraordinary achievement for a first commission,” says Bazalgette. “Jane has always thought big.”
Root herself is keen to stress the importance of her team, led by business partner and managing director Laura Franses, a British television executive who has worked for RDF, Raw, and Film4, and is a graduate of Harvard Business School. She is based in London and handles the business side.
Other key recruits include Phil Craig, the former Lapping Productions documentary maker, who produced the BBC’s Finest Hour, and David Dehaney, formerly of independent Love Productions, whose Baby Borrowers was taken up by NBC. Nutopia employs eight full-time staff, with at present around 50 on contract.
In the works are a new entertainment format show for Channel 4, a 90-minute 9/11 documentary and development projects for BBC1 and 2, PBS and Discovery US.
Root learns as she goes. Her aim now is to roll all her knowledge of television together and work around the globe.

Copyright: Television, magazine of the Royal Television Society, June 2010

24th June 2010

How do you measure a documentary’s impact? For some, it might be letters from grateful viewers, press cuttings or another Bafta on the mantelpiece.

For Jane Root, it was a Styrofoam cup. “I took my kids to see How To Train Your Dragon at my local cinema, and I suddenly realised I was drinking out of a cup branded with my show. That’s how big it got.”

Root’s indie Nutopia has only been up and running for two years but the former BBC2 controller and ex-Discovery Channel president wanted to get out of the stalls with a serious declaration of intent. Over 12 hours, The Story Of Us documents the making of America, with contributions from the likes of Michael Douglas, Colin Powell, Donald Trump, Meryl Streep and no less than President Obama himself, who stamped his seal of approval on the project with a personal introduction.

That her realisation should occur in a cinema was fitting for a series that has used movie techniques to bring a younger audience to The History Channel. The ace up its sleeve is its generous use of CGI, 360 shots in all, enabling the viewer to see everything from the Hoover Dam to Mount Rushmore spring up before their eyes.

“The drama is deliberately exciting,” says Root. “We wanted to reach the people who watched The Bourne Identity and Avatar at the cinema and who play video games. You can use these visual influences on their lives without short-changing them on the facts. People are used to immense inventiveness in how their programmes look and you need to stand up to that.”

The project was born out of Root’s business partner former C4 chief exec Michael Jackson’s reminiscences about Alistair Cooke’s America, and his realisation that nobody in US TV had comprehensively tackled the history of the country in 30 years. Extraordinary changes in the White House gave the idea added impetus.

“There’s been a huge amount of talk about history in the US as people reflect on what it means to have the first African-American president inaugurated in front of a building built by slaves,” Root reflects. “Suddenly, history had leapt out of textbooks and into a popular discussion about where we came from and where we’re going. We joked that it was every family’s patriotic duty to watch it.”

Nutopia’s primary base is in Root’s Los Angeles home, with a second office in London, but it would be a mistake to characterise it primarily as a US indie. She’s thinking global and wants to achieve this with a cross-pollination of British and US talent.

Future plans

The Story Of Us will play on The History Channel in the UK and is also likely to be of interest to a terrestrial broadcaster. But its concept is essentially a format, a way of bringing history to life that could in theory be adapted for any market. Mark Burnett is touting the idea abroad and has begun talks about local adaptations in 12 territories, including the UK. Meanwhile, Nutopia is toying with a 3D version of the original.

Root says compressing America’s rich history into 15 months required a prolonged “heads down” settling-in period for Nutopia, which she wanted to build without third-party investment. “We all made the decision that we would make this into our big moment and I spent a lot of time personally on that show because it’s a symbol of what we’re going to be like,” she says.

Doors are opening at other networks and in time she expects Nutopia’s output to divide roughly into one-third large-scale documentaries and two-thirds factual entertainment. The current slate includes 9/11: The Test, a 90-minute co-pro for History, C4 and BBC Worldwide, plus a peaktime history format for C4 and Baby Talk, which will use CGI techniques to show the world from infants’ perspectives.

Root has surrounded herself with big-hitters from the UK: not just Jackson but Peter Bazalgette; former Love Productions executive David DeHaney; Laura Franses, formerly of Raw TV and Amaze TV; and ex-Brook Lapping executive producer Phil Craig.

She made America her home six years ago and describes the US TV market as “constantly hungry”, with more money than ideas – a contrast with the “incredibly painful” process of cancelling something old to do something new at BBC2.

“If you come up with something big and you can speak in the US voice to a US audience, there are opportunities,” she says. “But you must really bond with them, and not try to sell them something that’s more BBC2 or BBC4. Their shows are fast-moving by British standards and there’s more narration, but that’s what this audience wants.”

For Root, the biggest change in her attitude to production since her Wall to Wall days is that networks need shows that can define their brand. History now has that with The Story Of Us, which broke records for the channel on its first night.

“When I was at BBC2, it took me a few years to work out that if you have three really big things a year, you have a network that gets talked about,” she reflects. “Once I realised that, the rest of my life became easier. But hardly anyone ever offers anything on that scale. I was always spoilt for choice if I wanted a great one-off, but I never had enough things that the whole country would engage with. I know Michael felt the same and that’s what got us thinking.”

She says it’s fun to get back into production, knowing the things that happen at networks behind closed doors that she could never have imagined previously. She acknowledges the “gutsy, ballsy move” that History president Nancy DuBuc made in commissioning The Story Of Us.

The decision fits with Root’s self-image as a “high-risk gambler” and she admires what she sees as pockets of comparable ambition in the UK. She praises Peter Fincham for sticking to his guns over The One Show when at BBC1 and then super-sizing The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent at ITV1, while marvelling at the transformation of MasterChef and the creativity of C4’s Inside Nature’s Giants and One Born Every Minute.

Risk or not, The Story Of Us has, she says, given Nutopia the confidence to go it alone. Having staged the discovery of oil in Texas and the bombing of Pearl Harbour in a single day, and coped with a flood washing away the Jonestown set yet still coming in on budget and to schedule, Root marvels: “Having done this, we really feel we can do anything.”

by Robin Parker – Broadcast

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/people/the-producer/jane-root-nutopia/5015353.article

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Obama Speech
( Click above or go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2010/apr/21/barack-obama-history-channel )

Nutopia, the independent producer founded by former BBC2 controller Jane Root, has scored a bit of a coup in persuading Barack Obama to film an introductory link for its 12-hour drama-documentary epic, America: The Story of Us, which premieres on the History Channel in the US on Sunday. The series tells the 400-year history of America with CGI animation, dramatic recreations, and commentary on the importance and context of particular events from people including Donald Trump, Michael Douglas, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, former secretary of state Colin Powell and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. Hardly surprising, given that the Nutopia board includes former Channel 4 chief executive Michael Jackson and ex Endemol UK creative director Peter Bazalgette – along with Root, both past masters at mixing programming genres to come up with new hybrid storytelling formats.

by Jason Deans

Recorded history goes back 6,000 years — but the History Channel goes back just 15.
And yet it seems like History has, during that time, managed to cover all 6,000 years — with Hitler, the Egyptians, the Civil War and WWII shows around the clock.
So I was betting against the claim that its newest project, “America: The Story of Us,” could possibly be the most in-depth series they’ve ever produced in History’s history.
However, after watching just two episodes, I have to cash in my chips and declare them the winner.
The six-night, 12-hour event will not only teach you things about ourselves that you never learned in school, but things you wish you had.

UP A CREEK: “America: The Story of Us” is on six consecutive nights starting Sunday on History.
It’s a nearly flawless, “you’re kidding!” look at history as we don’t know it.
They not only go in-depth about the stuff we all knew that shaped the country, but also how plants, trees, animals, weather, the ocean, whales, rivers and rocks all played huge parts in shaping how a continent became the country of the United States.
Did you know, for example, that the first settlers at Jamestown didn’t leave a mark in history? Those unprepared souls arrived without livestock or the bare necessities of life in an unforgiving environment. Instead, they brought gold-testing chemicals.
When farmer/entrepreneur John Rolfe landed a few years later with smuggled tobacco seeds (those are what really changed the course of the nation), he found only 60 of the 500 original settlers still alive. The rest had died of disease, exposure and incompetence. One man had even been hanged for killing his pregnant wife with the intention of eating her.
And how about them slaves, huh? Turns out many of the earliest settlers were free West Africans who came here quite willingly, fought and worked alongside other settlers. The first revolutionary patriot killed in the Boston Massacre was Crispus Attucks, a black man.
The series, done in reenactments and CGI, opens with comments from President Obama, and goes on to cover the expansion West, slavery, the wars, railroads, cities, the boom, the dust bowl, the Great Depression, Baby Boomers, space exploration and the millennium.
OK, so what’s not quite right with it?
Same thing as what’s not quite right with our country: celebrities.
For no reason whatsoever, the series includes comments from irrelevant movie stars like Michael Douglas.
Together again at last: Lincoln and Douglas!

Full Article: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/epic_story_school_america_that_you_2UcobZSyHPLOkFkCrKvrYJ#ixzz0losOddKu

April 20 2010

President Barack Obama will introduce AMERICA THE STORY OF US, a new 12-hour series on HISTORY™, sharing reflections on the spirit and resilience that continue to shape our country. The President’s remarks will open the premiere episode on Sunday, April 25, at 9pm ET. New episodes of AMERICA THE STORY OF US air on Sundays through Memorial Day, covering 400 years of our nation’s history.

Find full story on link below

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/president-barack-obama-to-open-america-the-story-of-us-series-on-historytm-91601034.html

Posted: April 14, 2010
Documentaries have gone mainstream. While not ready for primetime — or, in many ways, way beyond primetime — the offspring of documentary programming has gripped audiences on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. But what may be most interesting in terms of documentary topics is how the genre has influenced non-documentaries.
The question today, for documentary filmmakers, and those interested in “documentary topics,” is: How big can — and should — documentary get?
We’re in an interesting place here today — an intersection, or place of hybrids. And that’s an exciting place to be.
Think of something like The Apprentice, Kitchen Nightmares, or Top Gear. All have taken elements from ways of making programs that are more typical of the documentary world and have parlayed them into huge shows.
How big should documentary get?
……………………
My answer is as big as it possibly can.
I’ll let others judge the success of America The Story of Us, which will premiere on History on April 25th.
My pitch these days is that filmmakers, especially those raised in the documentary form and in journalism, should take on huge territories. Create new hybrids.
There’s loads of ways to do it — with formats that grow out of documentaries like Undercover Boss.
With performance and comedy embraced back into documentary in Sky in the UK’s Pineapple Dance Studios (watch it on You Tube). Or doc soaps meet Antiques Road Show in History channel’s breakout hit Pawn Stars.
With Its new technology that gives you Life and Planet Earth and of course America Story of Us.
With CGI and animation.
There are a ton of new hybrids no one has even contemplated out there ready to be created.
But whatever it is don’t be afraid to make it big, the rest of television culture needs you to do it.
For complete article please go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-root/the-best-of-both-worlds-h_b_537442.html

Excerpts from Jane Root speech given at MIPDOC closing speech, Cannes April 11th 2010

31 March, 2010
Nutopia, the company set up by former BBC2 controller Jane Root and Laura Franses, has made two senior appointments.
Former Love Productions executive David DeHaney, who has worked on hit series such as Baby Borrowers and Boys And Girls Alone, comes on board as creative director with a remit to drive development and production of the indie’s factual slate.
Phil Craig also joins Nutopia as an executive producer to develop and deliver factual series and factually-inspired dramas. Craig’s previous credits include Discovery’s Emmy-nominated 9/11 drama documentary The Flight That Fought Back.
Craig, who previously worked at Furnace Productions and as joint head of programmes at Brook Lapping, will also executive produce the new indie’s second commission, 9/11: The Test, for Channel 4, The History Channel and BBC Worldwide.
The 90-minute drama documentary looks at the 2001 attacks from the point of view of key political and military leaders.
Nutopia’s first commission – the epic 12-hour series America: The Story Of US – is due to air on the History Channel in April in the US. The indie is also currently in pre-production for a major new format for Channel 4.
Last December, Nutopia signed a two-year, first-look distribution deal with BBC Worldwide that saw the distributor invest an undisclosed sum in the indie’s development slate in return for a first look on all distribution rights outside the UK and the US.
Nutopia board members include C4 boss Michael Jackson and ex-Endemol chief creative officer Peter Bazalgette.

By Ann-Marie Corvin – Broadcast

Jane Root, the CEO of indie prodco Nutopia and former controller of BBC2, is to give the closing keynote at Mipdoc in Cannes next month.

The two-day factual conference this year returns to the Martinez Hotel in Cannes, France, having previously been held at the Carlton Hotel, and takes place over the weekend of April 9/10.

Among the issues Root is expected to discuss are the making of America: The Story Of US (12×60′), the big-budget series that Nutopia recently finished producing for History US; and worldwide trends for history programming. Root set up her production company in 2008, having previously been president of Discovery Channel US.

Elsewhere during the weekend, MercuryMedia’s newly appointed non-exec chairman Simon Shaps will moderate a panel session entitled What Do Buyers Want?, featuring More4 editor Tabitha Jackson and France 5’s head of acquisitions and international coproductions Caroline Behar.

Meanwhile, the Mipdoc Coproduction Challenge returns this year, with entrants to be judged by BBC Storyville editor Nick Fraser, ITVS VP of programming Claire Aguilar, CBC/Radio-Canada exec director of factual entertainment Julie Bristow, Rai TV commissioning editor Lorenzo Hendel and AETN International VP of programming and production Michael Katz.

Adam Benzine
17 Mar 2010
© C21 Media 2010

We’ve travelled coast to coast interviewing more notable Americans in two great American cities; New York and Los Angeles. Among those we interviewed on the East coast were Michael Douglas, Newt Gingrich, and Rudy Giuliani. Meanwhile on the West coast we caught up with Jane Fonda, Sheryl Crow, and John Lasseter. More interviews will continue through January, with Meryl Streep and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs among those lined up. It’s been a privilege meeting some of America’s finest entrepreneurs, actors, singers,  and politicians. As to whether we prefer NYC or LA, the jury’s still out…