Pivot is the name of a TV channel aimed at 15-to-34-year-olds who want to change the world.
In the process, they could help Pivot change the television business.
Announced last December, the new venture was officially unveiled Wednesday at a news conference disclosing program and distribution details as well as its name and August 1 sign-on date. It initially will be available in more than 40 million homes.
Pivot is a division of Participant Media, founded in 2004 by entrepreneur-philanthropist Jeff Skoll, who helped mastermind eBay. Since then, Participant has produced more than 40 fiction and nonfiction films (winning 35 Academy Awards) that include “The Help,” ”Charlie Wilson’s War,” ”Food, Inc.,” ”An Inconvenient Truth” and Steven Spielberg’s recent “Lincoln.”
The company is dedicated “to creating lasting sustainable change through the power of storytelling,” said Pivot president Evan Shapiro, “and now we’re bringing that to TV.
“The mandate of Pivot is entertainment that inspires social change and our target is millennials, but other than that we are a general entertainment network with all types of content: drama, comedy, talk and documentaries,” said Shapiro, who before joining Participant served as president of IFC and Sundance Channel, and executive-produced such documentaries and series as “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” and the Peabody Award-winning “Brick City” and “Portlandia.”
Pivot will program around the clock (no long-form infomercials padding fringe periods). Documentaries will fill much of the schedule, including those from the Participant library, film festivals and world premieres.
Acquired series include “Friday Night Lights,” the inspiring high school football drama, and “Farscape,” a cult classic previously aired on the Sci-Fi Channel about a diverse group of passengers of a space vessel forced to work together to survive.
Pivot also will introduce its viewers to “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” a long-running Canadian sitcom focused on a Muslim community in a fictional Saskatchewan prairie town. “It has never been seen in the United States because the word ‘mosque’ is in the title,” Shapiro said.
Pivot plans 300 hours of new programming its first year.
New series will include an audience-collaborated variety show produced and hosted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a talk-reality show with Meghan McCain (daughter of former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain), and, from writer Craig Pearce (“Moulin Rouge” and the upcoming “The Great Gatsby”), a fanciful drama titled “Will,” about a young, as-yet-unproven William Shakespeare that mashes up his era with modern times (and is billed as a blend of “Deadwood,” ”8 Mile” and “Shakespeare in Love”).
“Jersey Strong” is a docu-series from the producers of “Brick City” that focuses on two unconventional families in Newark, N.J. — a man and woman raising children and and mentoring young people who themselves are members of two rival gangs, and two women in a same-sex relationship who run a law firm.
Each night the network will air “TakePart Live,” a talk show whose topics will be chosen earlier in the day by viewers going online to TakePart.com, Participant Media’s social action hub.
Pivot is entering into a programing and marketing relationship with Rolling Stone magazine, and will co-produce 10 documentaries with Univision, which will air each film in Spanish while Pivot airs the film in English.
A slogan of Pivot is “It’s Your Turn,” which addresses the 27 million-member audience segment the network has dubbed “passionate millennials.”
Not only is the new network gearing its programs to this group, it’s also tailoring its distribution strategy to how they consume media, Shapiro said.
Reports are rampant that younger audiences are shunning traditional TV in favor of YouTube videos on the Internet, and that they are “cutting the cord” of cable programming as a moneysaving move or because they deem TV an outmoded way to watch.
Pivot’s research has found otherwise.
“There is no such thing as a cord-cutter,” Shapiro said. “They all have broadband — and it’s bringing them everything they want, including video. So we decided to reframe the conversation.”
Pivot has identified two main groups within its prospective audience: cable TV subscribers who watch “television” across multiple platforms, and viewers who subscribe only to broadband.
Pivot will accommodate both groups.
“It’s the first channel that’s available both through traditional pay-television bundling, and via your broadband provider as a stand-alone (service),” he said. For an extra monthly fee (described as less than the cost of a cup of diner coffee) through the Pivot app on any device, “subscribers will be able to take this channel, both live streaming and on-demand, with you wherever you go in the world.”
Online features will include a “Take Action” button to access information about social issues touched on in each program, customized to the viewer’s locale and interests.
Shapiro believes this dual source could be a game-changer for the TV industry, making a “television” channel available to any viewer regardless of the chosen delivery device. Pivot could be the first of many “a la carte” broadband channels offered to subscribers weary of paying for whole tiers of cable-TV networks.
Such an arrangement meets the demands of younger viewers, said Shapiro, as overwhelmingly expressed in Pivot’s research: “I want to watch what I want where I want when I want.”
How will Pivot be greeted by this demanding audience?
“The market is a gauge of our success. But social change is an equally important, if not more important, gauge.” Together, said Shapiro, they’re what the company refers to as its “double bottom line.”
Directing and Editing “Conclave”; Insights From Edward Berger and Nick Emerson
It’s been a bruising election year but this time we’re referring to a ballot box struggle that’s more adult than the one you’d typically first think of in 2024. Rather, on the industry awards front, the election being cited is that of the Pope which takes front and center stage in director Edward Berger’s Conclave (Focus Features), based on the 2016 novel of the same title by Robert Harris. Adapted by screenwriter Peter Straugham, Conclave stars Ralph Fiennes as the cardinal leading the conclave that has convened to select the next Pope. While part political thriller, full of backstabbing and behind-closed-door machinations, Conclave also registers as a thoughtful adult drama dealing with themes such as a crisis of faith, weighing the greater good, and engaging in a struggle that’s as much about spirituality as the attainment of power.
Conclave is Berger’s first feature after his heralded All Quiet on the Western Front, winner of four Oscars in 2023, including for Best International Feature Film. And while Conclave would on the surface seem to be quite a departure from that World War I drama, there’s a shared bond of humanity which courses through both films.
For Berger, the heightened awareness of humanity hit home for him by virtue of where he was--in Rome, primarily at the famed Cinecittà studio--to shoot Conclave, sans any involvement from the Vatican. He recalled waking up in Rome to “soak up” the city. While having his morning espresso, Berger recollected looking out a window and seeing a priest walking about with a cigarette in his mouth, a nun having a cup of coffee, an archbishop carrying a briefcase. It dawned on Berger that these were just people going to... Read More