VARIETY: As ‘Shiny Happy People’ Achieves Prime Video’s Biggest Docuseries Debut Ever, Amazon TV Chief Vernon Sanders Talks Strategy (EXCLUSIVE)

By Selome Hailu

June 16, 2023 1:40pm PT

“Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets” has had the biggest debut of any documentary series ever produced by Amazon Studios, Variety has learned.

The limited series investigates controversies surrounding the Duggar family, best known for TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting,” including Josh Duggar’s conviction for possession of child pornography and the family’s connection to the Institute in Basic Life Principles, a controversial Christian organization.

After premiering on Amazon Prime Video with all four episodes on June 2, “Shiny Happy People” reached more viewers in its first nine days than any Amazon docuseries, including high-profile titles like “LuLaRich,” the 2021 docuseries that examined the LuLaRoe pyramid scheme. (An exact tally of viewers for these series is unknown.)

Additionally, measured over the same nine-day period, the series has been responsible for the acquisition of more new Prime Video customers than any other Amazon docuseries. More than 60% of “Shiny Happy People” viewers have been women, with more of those women falling into the 18-34 age demographic than even Amazon could have hoped for: “I’d love to tell you that we knew for sure it was going to do exactly what it’s done,” says Amazon Studios’ head of television Vernon Sanders, “but it’s been multiples higher than what we anticipated.”

Part of that success comes from lessons learned during the release of “LuLaRich.”

“In doing the research, we understood that there was a big community of people who participated as sellers of that product, but also who bought the product — a big cross-section of people who would be intrigued to learn more,” Sanders explained. “So with that success, we started to look for things that may have similar attributes, a big community of people who may have an interest in a topic personally and through following the media.”

The Duggars were wildly popular during a bygone era of reality television which, combined with darker and more recent headlines, created the type of audience Sanders’ team was looking for.

And beyond the content itself, this viewership highs also have to do with release format. For example, the first two episodes of the series were simulataneously released on Freevee, the free ad-supported streaming service also owned and operated by Amazon, and ultimately made “Shiny Happy People” the No. 2 most watched original docuseries since the platform launched. Sanders says that there will certainly be more dual-platform debuts to come.

“We’re experimenting with releasing content on both, trying to take advantage of the fact that we have two robust services, and so far the experiments have benefited both services,” Sanders says. Subscriber acquisition is a major piece of how that success measured, and thus far, Amazon hasn’t found that offering free portions of content harms viewership: “We’re seeing some of the Freevee customers joining Prime as as a part of this experience. We’re only seeing benefits.”

The use of Freevee to boost Prime Video projects is a strategy that Amazon is also employing in the scripted arena. Sanders says that as Prime Video released the Season 1 finale of “Citadel,” the premiere episode arrived on Freevee, prompting some of those viewers to join Prime and binge the full series.

And there’s another avenue for scripted and unscripted content to complement each other as Amazon seeks to leverage its access to the women aged 18-34 that a project like “Shiny Happy People” attracted. When asked whether Amazon was considering programming longer-running documentary projects as opposed to limited series in order to hold onto that audience, Sanders responds that he’s more focused on building out a wider slate of options.

“This is an audience we’ve really wanted to deliver for,” he says. “We’ve had success with ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ on the scripted side, and we’re going to be looking for a slew of different pieces. We’ll definitely be doing more documentaries. You’ll see more scripted series that have a cross-section of touchpoints: ‘Summer I Turned Pretty’ is romantic and nostalgic and sweet. [‘Shiny Happy People’] is a deep-dive into what happens with family dynamics and religious beliefs. There may be pieces that we’ll adapt in the doc space and look to do a scripted version of, but it’s all about the right partners and making sure that we keep the creative first.”