Last summer, during Sunny Side of the Doc, news broke of storied factual producer and distributor Off the Fence’s bankruptcy proceedings; a year later, the company, led by CEO Bo Stehmeier, is part of World Storytelling Media Group (WSMG), where it is driving new collaborations and taking a thoughtful approach to AI as it seeks new models for making and monetizing compelling non-scripted content.
It’s been quite the year for Off the Fence, which filed for administration in June 2025 before being snapped up by Insight TV. Following the deal, Insight TV created World Storytelling Media Group (WSMG) to house both companies, with Insight TV remaining within the pay TV and B2C space and OTF focused on monetizing the combined catalog. Within this new structure, the company is driving forward with new production, collaboration, and funding models.
For example, Off the Fence is working with John Downer Productions and One Tribe TV on a development slate of natural history projects for the global market, leveraging its global distribution capabilities and library, John Downer Productions’ archive of footage, and One Tribe TV’s production chops. It also recently joined forces with Wildbear Entertainment and Insight TV for a new science series, Ever Wonder, the first project out of WSMG’s newly launched commissioning strategy.
“I’m a big believer that the word co-production is actually dead, and it’s all about collaboration,” Stehmeier says in our Real Talk strand, which you can watch on YouTube or Spotify or keep reading below. New models for natural history, in particular, are paramount, he said.
“Natural history has been in a bit of a tight spot for a long time,” Stehmeier says of the genre, which can be “stupidly expensive.” There are platforms that can still afford to pull together the top-end blue-chip projects, he said, but the landscape is particularly challenging for the “mid-tier” titles.
Stehmeier also weighed in on the company’s financial difficulties of last year, which were largely due to the fact that it’s an “arrhythmic market,” he said. The ownership transfer provided the opportunity for its rebirth. That process has included cautiously embracing opportunities in using new creative tools thanks to AI to bring costs down, speed up production, and deliver for audiences.
“The genres that we operate in all have this Achilles heel, especially science, history, and natural history. The storytelling in the legacy business is still very slow. It’s still very old-skewing, but the new audiences, 40-plus, coming through, especially on connected devices, need storytelling to be faster. [AI] can turn storytelling around more quickly.”
Off the Fence is also embracing YouTube, a platform he describes as form-agnostic. “TV executives of a certain age always look at YouTube and think short-form, but an actual fact is that the viewing times have jumped from 7 minutes to 20 minutes, and we’re getting closer and closer to 40 minutes. But that doesn’t mean you can take old storytelling and put it on YouTube. You can, and there’s some mixed success, but the storytelling there is too slow on YouTube. They need the information to drop faster. If there’s only X amount of information, well then it might only be seven minutes, but if it’s dense of information, it could be an hour and a half. So it’s more about how much you can deliver and let the shape of the content decide how long it should be.”
Stehmeier then weighed in on the funding jigsaw and the role that brands can play in getting content made today. “Most of the content that comes to us is in deficit, where we, as a distributor or as a group, step in to close the deficit. We very much lean on the legacy business to give that ROI. But the second and third window world that we used to have is diminishing very quickly. YouTube being either the premiere window, followed by a legacy window, followed by long tail is really important. For us as a distributor, we are the rights’ nanny of a producer. It’s our responsibility to make sure that wherever there’s money to be had, we’re present. And I do see a world where 40% to 50% will come from legacy businesses—the linear broadcasters. The remaining 50% will then be divvied up by a distributor, and then the brands come in. As alliances happen between public broadcasters and YouTube, they’re realizing the audiences are all going to shift, and there’s going to be no difference anymore. To actually get a piece of content where a sponsor can use it as an anchor for their own advertising campaign, that’s where the remaining 25% sit.”
AVOD and FAST have emerged as key revenue generators for the company, rising from 5% of turnover to 35% over the last few years. “I can see that growing much faster. In the old ecosystems, if you’re a brand and you want to get in touch with adventure programming or science and wildlife, you would go to us, and then we’d stick it up somewhere with a broadcaster, and the brand gets reach, but there’s no interactivity. The amazingness about YouTube is the interactivity, the community management, and really creating an authentic universe where people have trust, they believe, and there is an interactive engagement. That’s a key KPI for these brands, and I can see more and more of them circumnavigating the media houses to go direct to market.”
Ultimately, Stehmeier says, there’s always an opportunity to find a new path. “If you put your effort, love, and attention to something, you can do it. There is room for change, and there is a future. It’s maybe not as comfortable as some people would like it, but for those who have the hunger and the creativity, don’t worry.”
