Atlas 15th Anniversary - Interview with Bruce Klein

Atlas Media is about to celebrate its 15th anniversary. In a WSN online exclusive, president and executive producer, Bruce David Klein, talks about how he got into the TV business and how he built the company that specializes in non-fiction programming, producing series such as Young, Sexy & Spoiled, Beach Ambush and Mysterious Places. Among Atlas’ new product are the series Dr. G: Medical Examiner, which will air on Discovery Health this summer, and the docu-movie Breaking Vegas: The True Story of the MIT Blackjack Team, which airs Sunday May 9th on The History Channel.

WSN: How did you get started in the television business?

KLEIN: I started working in local television, at ABC affiliates and independent stations as program and promotion director, where I basically bought shows from syndicators. And after a couple of years of this I realized, “Hey I can do that, I can produce these shows.” In 1989, 15 years ago, I started Atlas. [I was] originally in the syndication business, where I would call thousands of program directors all across America and try to get them to buy some of our early shows. But what happened after a couple of years, in 1991, 1992, is that cable started to catch up to syndication. And there was a time at NATPE, when we had a booth and we were selling to local stations, and someone from A&E came up and said, “Hey, we’d like to buy that show from you—forget syndication.” So instead of calling thousands of program directors and putting together barter sales, there was this magical thing where we would hand a cable network a tape and get a check, and deal with only one person. Basically that started our growth with the cable industry.

WSN: And thank goodness for cable because the syndication market has dried up.

KLEIN: There is no syndication market anymore, except for about six people and 12 shows!

WSN: And why did you decide to focus on non-fiction programming?

KLEIN: I personally have done fiction and non-fiction, the fact is that nothing is more exciting than real life. The idea that you don’t know absolutely anything about a given subject, and over a period of a couple of months you delve so intensely into it that suddenly, quickly, you become an arm-chair expert, is like a pure adrenaline rush. I love meeting all the incredible, fascinating people who are involved in the subject, going to real places. Right now, at Atlas, if you walk down the hallway, there are daily meetings on food recipes, on the history of the hammer, on the MIT blackjack team, on autopsies, on etiquette. I can’t imagine that anything in the fictional world could be so diverse and interesting.

WSN: You’ve built yourself into the position where you provide lots and lots of cable channels, so obviously you have something to offer that a lot of other producers and distributors don’t. What’s unique and different about your programming?

KLEIN: It depends on the genre. There are a few things that distinguish us. One is we have an obsession with information, with quirky details, practical tips, things that the viewer will find interesting. We are experts at unique spins and innovations—taking tried and tested formulas and spinning them around a little, as we’ve done with some of our reality game shows and certainly our docu-movies like Breaking Vegas and History’s Lost and Found for The History Channel.

Another point is cost-effectiveness. We are incredibly clever with finding ways to squeeze every penny. And the last thing—that isn’t talked about a lot—is customer service. We want to create [a program] that is entertaining, that is informative, and that [gets good] ratings. That dovetails nicely with the network’s goal. I think that has always been important—the customer service angle of it.

WSN: Can you talk about what you describe as “cross-pollinating”—the fact that there is no strictly defined documentary, there is no strictly defined drama anymore. That has opened up opportunities for you, hasn’t it?

KLEIN: Absolutely. The age of the genre is dead. Right now you are seeing genres being combined at an incredibly rapid rate. And the audience’s hunger for the fresh, for the new, for the surprising, for the shocking, for the fascinating, for the informative, has gone up exponentially over the last couple of years, and for obvious reasons. 10 years ago there were only a couple of cable networks giving out X amount of information. Now there are 500 cable networks giving out 100X amounts of information. So to give new information to a viewer, you need to combine things and shake things up. Networks themselves are doing that. They are not only doing their “branded” [programming], they are also doing other [programming].

But the idea of cross-pollinating goes beyond blending genres, I think it’s also from the creative standpoint, we’ve always had a philosophy here to combine and cross-pollinate people—the people who actually work on the shows, with other people from other areas. We love it when we have a show with someone from the BBC with somebody from MTV with somebody from A&E in terms of their background, and we have that sort of clash of cultures and ideas. The history guy might be grounding them in the facts and in creating interesting story lines. The MTV guy is giving it style and the A&E guy is giving it more credibility. That is very, very healthy, and since the industry is like that, we’ve patterned our production process very much like that.

WSN: How has technology enhanced what you do?

KLEIN: I think technology is a very, very slippery slope. I went into this business with one rule, and that was I never wanted to own a facility, and now we have a facility with 15 edit suites, working 24 hours, seven days a week! And the reason is very simple—a room that originally cost $1 million, now costs $50,000, and that has been the biggest thing. Certainly HD [high definition] is next.

And in terms of how technology has helped growth in general, I think being able to email graphics and rough cuts to clients and not go back and forth with tapes has really cleaned up the office, and made things much more streamlined.

WSN: Is there less the idea these days that a show is strictly for network television, or strictly for cable television?

KLEIN: The line between broadcast and cable has basically been erased. I’ve been saying this for years. Broadcast has reduced the cost of their programming from $1.2 million for one hour, to $800,000 per hour, to $600,000 per hour, and even $500,000 per hour, while cable has increased their costs from $80,000 an hour, to $100,000 per hour, to $250,000 per hour and beyond. So, the gap is becoming smaller and smaller. Five years ago it was unheard of for people who had worked in broadcast and syndication to work on a cable show, and yet now, 50 percent of our staff and people who produce our shows come from syndication and from broadcast. And that’s because their rates have come down, cable has gone up, and we’re right in the middle.

WSN: What new shows have you been working on?

KLEIN: We just launched Dr. G: Medical Examiner, which is about one of the world’s top female forensic pathologists. She has the medical examiner’s office in Orange County, which is Orlando, Florida. We have 24-hour access to the investigators, to the morgue, the staff and her. The show is basically all about the inner workings of this forensic pathology lab. We follow specific stories, we are doing a lot of high-end reenactments that we’re shooting in HD that will bring to life some of these stories, because obviously, we only see the autopsy. When we recreate what happens as she pieces together the puzzle, we use high definition reenactments.

WSN: There seems to be a lot of demand for forensic detective shows.

KLEIN: The interesting thing is that when you deal with forensics, by definition, it combines a number of genres. On the one hand there are very emotionally wrenching personal stories, which are very appealing to female viewers. Then you have the medical and the science, which appeal to men. You have the interest in the strong character of Dr. G who is solving mysteries, so mystery fans can like that. So you have a nexus with this kind of programming of mystery, medical story, and of soap opera in some cases.

WSN: You obviously love what you do! What keeps you going?

KLEIN: Yes, I can’t believe I get paid to do it as they say! What keeps me going? That’s a very good question. What keeps me going is the power of idea. What keeps me going is, here is a bottle of water, we want to make a show out of this, can we pull it off?

We just had this with The History Channel, when they came to us and asked if we could do a show about the history of a hammer. We ended up doing a pilot that was one of their best-received pilots and they just greenlighted the series—to me that’s the most exciting thing.

Since I am a person of a lot of different interests, I like to go deep into a million and one things, and that is reflected in my company. My company is an extension of the way I see the world, which is there are so many fascinating things, and you have to learn about every single one before you’re called home, so to speak!