ITN productions boss Ian Rumsey talks Netflix’s Harry & Meghan and updates royal documents for the social media generation

EXCLUSIVE: The EP behind Prince Harry’s amazing ITV interview highlighted its “truly independent” nature as opposed to Netflix’s Harry and Megan documentations.

said Ian Rumsey, managing director of ITN Productions (ITNP). Harry and Megan is “somewhat overshadowed” by the debates surrounding the royal couple’s involvement in the project. The show, which achieved blockbuster ratings, was co-produced and co-edited by Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell Productions.

“It was created in a way in collaboration with Harry and Meghan, which made it feel like they were partners in this document,” Rumsey said. “So I can understand that there is a debate about the level of subject involvement.”

The ITV interview with Prince Harry, on the other hand, “felt really independent,” Rumsey said, although there were concerns about independence before it aired as presenter Tom Bradby was friends with Harry and the Duke of Sussex. promote memoirs. Reservations.

During the January interview, Harry made several bombastic comments, including an extremely broad page against the “briefings, leaks and plantings” to the press coming from members of his family about him and his wife.

“The most important thing was that this was an interview with real, credible, journalistic power,” Rumsey said as the dust settled after an interview that took place more than three months ago. “Talking to broadcasters now, we can say we’ve done the Harry interview and it shows a level of skill, confidence and approach.”

The Harry Interview has now sold in more than 80 territories and there has been an increase in sales of programs about younger royals, including Prince Andrew’s daughters Beatrice and Eugenie and Princess Anne’s daughter Zara Tindall, Rumsey said, while ITN has been gaining lucrative new unearthed archives, such as Clips of Harry and William playing together as children.

Rumsey spoke to Deadline as King Charles III’s coronation approached and Harry would attend without Markle. ITN will stream the event this Saturday – the first coronation in seven decades – to various territories including the US where it will be used by CNN. Newly digitized clips of the king have also been released over the years, including when he and his wife Camilla met ABBA.

In the past three years ITNP has produced 75 documentaries about the British Royal Family and Rumsey said: ‘We have [recently] focused on bringing some of our older shows “up to date” before bringing them back to the international market. A new archive and interviews with people close to royal subjects have been added to bring older documents more up to date.

Rumsey said the surge in international sales came after Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.ITNP’s dozens of documentaries are mainly produced for Channel 5, which is owned by Paramount, or are funded directly by distributors.

“Insatiable appetite”

“I’m surprised that we still have so much appetite and interest,” Rumsey said. “It goes through phases, but we are in a time when the hunger is insatiable. It feels like a soap opera playing out in real time before our eyes.”

Younger members of the royal family are active on social media and Rumsey said this allows the documentary makers to appeal to a new generation of viewers.

“These younger members of the royal family are starting to feel accessible,” he added. “People feel they know more about their lives than they did 50 years ago when people were only given information [on the Royals] through the newspapers.”

ITNP also runs what is said to be the royal family’s most popular YouTube channel. Launched in 2019, the channel took two years to reach 1 million subscribers, a further 12 months to reach 2 million and then reached 3 million in just six weeks by the time of the Queen’s funeral, according to ITN . According to the news outlet, it generated a record 1.1 billion views last year.

“Even on TikTok we have seen edited clips [of the Royals] is doing very well,” explains Tami Hoffman, Head of News and Archives at ITNP.

“We imagine something like the coronation of a king as something from the 1950s that people watch on TV to take it easy, but it’s interesting how much appetite there will be on social media.”

ITN also forged a series of YouTube coronation announcements alongside short films titled BritBox Countdown to the Crown: the Who’s Who and What’s What of the Coronation, which will sit outside the streamer’s paywall.