It's showtime, folks!

Elizabeth Jensen has an article in The New York Times about Showtime:

The pay cable channel Showtime has been closing the gap with its rival HBO in the realm of original series— an achievement rewarded with a strong showing at the recent Golden Globes ceremony— but one major distinction has remained: HBO has long been the channel with a commitment to attention-grabbing original documentaries, and Showtime the channel without. Now, with the Sundance Film Festival premiere of The World According to Dick Cheney, Showtime is attempting to grab some documentary buzz for itself.
The film, directed by R. J. Cutler and Greg Finton, to be broadcast on Showtime on 15 March, will inaugurate a new strand of original documentaries, called Sho Closeup. Other individuals getting the documentary treatment this year include the comedian Richard Pryor; Lawrence Taylor, the former New York Giants linebacker; and Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator who was killed in 2011. In April, Showtime will broadcast Suge Knight: American Dream/American Knightmare, from the director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), who persuaded Knight, the founder of Death Row Records, to discuss the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.
Unlike HBO, which often tackles issues (from hydraulic fracturing to Middle East peace), Showtime will focus on high-profile, controversial personalities, including Cheney, the former vice president, who, in an interview last summer, reflected on his role in the Iraq war. “I’m interested in the psychology of culture-moving personalities; that’s what connects Richard Pryor and Dick Cheney,” said Showtime’s president of entertainment, David Nevins, who has been involved in the films’ development and suggested Mr. Cheney as a subject. Nevins, in a telephone interview, called the genre a “huge opportunity”. Documentaries, he said, “have a lot of currency right now. For not a huge investment I can make documentaries that will make news in the world.” Nevins, who declined to give specifics, said Showtime’s documentary initiative is “a small fraction” of the network’s film budget. Individual deals, he said, follow the formula of “giving the best filmmakers just enough money to make a great film”.
Showtime’s move into documentary makes sense, said Thom Powers, the documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival. “I’ve always wondered why they weren’t in the space more aggressively,” he said, noting that documentaries are talked about, “even beyond who sees them". By attracting visibility, press attention, and awards, he said, documentaries are particularly valuable for channels like Showtime, which added a million subscribers in the last year, bringing its total to 22.3 million. “They attract the kinds of things that get that brand out in the world,” Powers said.
Other cable networks are pursuing similar strategies. CNN in October announced CNN Films, which has signed development deals with the directors Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) and Andrew Rossi (Page One: Inside The New York Times), and acquired Girl Rising, about a global drive to educate girls. A&E commissioned The September Issue, Cutler’s 2009 project, and its sister channel History is a partner in an forthcoming documentary from Errol Morris (The Fog of War) on former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
There’s little chance that the pool of documentaries will be exhausted, Powers said, noting that HBO receives hundreds of submissions a month and shows only several dozen annually. Sheila Nevins, HBO’s president for documentaries, said she was not concerned about Showtime’s initiative. “I’m a very competitive person, but I do not feel competitive about this,” she said in a telephone interview. “There are more docus than there are homes. And the more homes, the better for the documentary community.”
At Showtime, other documentary programs in the works include a multipart series on climate change, Years of Living Dangerously. Showtime has also acquired other documentaries, including Sunset Strip, which was well received at the 2012 SXSW festival, and Marina Zenovich’s Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out, a follow-up to her award-winning Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, shown on HBO after the network acquired it at Sundance.
In a telephone interview, Zenovich said she was already working with Showtime on Richard Pryor: A Mythologic— with the cooperation of the comedian’s estate— when she decided to sell the network her new Polanski film. “They were really genuinely interested,” she said. “When you’re making these films, you want someone who really loves the films.” Showtime’s Closeup series, she said, “is a godsend to documentary filmmakers, especially me. I prefer to do profile pieces with a little more funk and grit, as opposed to issue pieces, which HBO has done a lot of.”
Showtime executives will be at Sundance and other film festivals, looking for documentary acquisitions. Cutler, who called HBO “a great friend of the documentary community”, applauded Showtime’s embrace of the genre and the money it would bring. The Cheney film, he noted, is being shown at Sundance in a documentary premiere category reserved for established filmmakers. The category, he said, reflects “the fact that there are far more career filmmakers now, and that is in large part because we have these places to go for financing”.
Powers noted that two other channels, Oprah Winfrey’s OWN, and Discovery, pursued similar splashy inroads in the documentary world in recent years only to pull back. “Whenever one of these channels steps forward and says that they’re going to be active in that space, I approach it with cautious optimism,” he said. “It’s great to see them supporting filmmakers, but after they’ve been in it for twenty-plus years like Sheila Nevins has, then it’ll be time to give them an award.”

Rico says maybe he can interest one of these companies in Zone of Fire...