Inside TV’s Booming ‘Heartland Core’ Business: How ITV America’s Thinkfactory Is Cornering the Country Market From Nashville

While nothing holds a candle to the Olympics at the moment for NBC, one of the broadcaster’s other prides and joys of the summer was a two-hour concert special for late country singer Toby Keith. Featuring performances by Trace Adkins, Priscilla Block, Luke Bryan, Jelly Roll, Darius Rucker, Carrie Underwood, Clay Walker, and Lainey Wilson, plus Keith’s daughter, Krystal Keith, among others, “Toby Keith: American Icon” drew 4.7 million viewers when it debuted across NBC on Aug. 28 and next day on streamer Peacock.

Filmed in Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, the two-hour special was the most-watched show across broadcast that night and grew 10% from its “America’s Got Talent” lead-in — a show that’s typically hard to top in viewers for NBC. And the win was in large part thanks to ITV America‘s Thinkfactory Media, the production company behind “Gene Simmons Family Jewels,” “Hatfields & McCoys” and the “Mama June” reality series, which has decided to go all-in on heartland and country content by moving its CEO Adam Reed and home office to Nashville.

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“If you look historically at Thinkfactory and what we’ve done over the past 20-plus years, we’ve really always had a heartland focus,” Reed told Variety. “Traditionally, we were 80% focused in that space. And so it was not a redirect at all, it was really a doubling down for us, and it’s a space we’ve known for a long time.”

Reed, who grew up in Bakersfield, California, says he “came out of the womb wearing cowboy boots,” and has always had a soft spot for heartland content. And over the past few years working in Hollywood, Reed looked around and decided “there is a true underserved audience there” for heartland and country, primarily in the unscripted space, and he decided to go to the heat of the heartland to stake Thinkfactory’s full claim to the genre.

“For me, it was more than just saying, OK, we’re going to double, triple down on heartland,” Reed said. “For me, it was moving myself, my family, the company, to the heartland. And that’s an important differentiator. There’s a very big difference between producers that fly in and try to put things together and fly out, and actually living here amongst people in the heartland, and that’s really been the game changer.”

But what exactly is Reed changing the game in? From the “Yellowstone” franchise to Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” album, mormon-centric reality TV series and the seemingly endless number of country music award shows, there’s a lot of things that could be labeled “heartland” content and a lot of question marks about what producers and networks think should be heartland content. According to Reed, one thing it’s not is “a political statement.”

“There are heartland-minded people on the coast, there are Heartland-minded people everywhere in the country,” Reed said. “The best example of that is how do you feel when you’re watching the Olympics? A sense of unification as a country. So I think that’s a really good definition. People go what is heartland? It’s what unifies us as Americans, and that can be a family docuseries that showcases values and conflicts and folks across the country.”

That includes Thinkfactory’s divisive “Mama June: Family Crisis” (previously “Mama June: From Not to Hot”), a We TV reality series that began by following the weight-loss journey of June “Mama June” Shannon, the mother of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” star Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson.

“Say what you want about ‘Mama June,’ it is still one of the highest-rated shows on cable on Friday nights in the country,” Reed said. “And if you really look at that show, although there are comedic elements to it, that’s a real family going through real stuff that we can all relate to. That’s really the heart.”

“One of the issues that you have to turn the rock over and look at is that, from our experience, the networks want heartland content — but I don’t think they necessarily know what that means,” UTA’s Nick Barnes, who runs the agency’s “heartland” division, said. “And they come to us and say, we know we need to engage this audience, but we don’t know the way forward. UTA is trying to serve those buyers and networks up with, here’s who you should be paying attention and here’s the story that resonates.”

Nashville native Barnes, who UTA says is the only non-music agent at any agency assigned to the heartland, points to Thinkfactory as one of the main production companies platforms be looking at, specifically because of Reed’s physical presence in Nashville. The one note Barnes has for producers in the space is he wants to see more “faith and family” content.

“Some of the things we haven’t tackled yet is, what does heartland unscripted mean in faith and family?” Barnes said. “Faith and family is a buzzword often turned around by the buyers. We know that it’s working on the scripted side, working with the ‘Chosen,’ it’s working with films coming out of Lionsgate, it’s working with John Irwin’s new company and Amazon. That’s all scripted content. But what what remains to be seen is what is going to happen in unscripted.”

ITV America CEO David George, who A-OK’d Reed and Thinkfactory’s shift to Nashville when Reed persuaded him that the best way to do business with the heartland industry was to infiltrate it, has his eyes on what Thinkfactory can do to produce country-centric content across other ITV America brands, including Blumhouse, High Noon Entertainment, Leftfield Pictures and Good Caper Content.

“I’m seeing opportunity across the other main pools to cross pollinate. We might have ideas Adam comes across in Nashville that would transfer to Good Caper. In the current space, crime can be heartland. Food and lifestyle, which is what High Noon does, there’s a ton going on in the heartland world that could go into High Noon. For Leftfield, there’s male-skewing shows, those type of things. In a strange way, heartland can be a genre, but Heartland can also be just a part of an idea. There are Blumhouse country shows that we’ve been talking about, too. The sky’s the limit with it.”

While unscripted is definitely Thinkfactory’s bread and butter, it also has a number of scripted titles in motion, including music-inspired TV movies, holiday specials and biopics. The ITV America-run company is currently working on projects with singer Kane Brown, singer Darius Rucker, Little Big Town’s Kimberly Schlapman, comedian John Crist, husband and wife singing duo The War and Treaty (Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter), singer Trace Adkins and country radio and TV personality Bobby Bones.

In terms of the buyers interested in Thinkfactory’s work, Reed and co. are producing content for platforms including ABC/Hulu, Lifetime, A&E, Universal Music Group, The Wonder Project and NBC/Peacock.

A&E’s executive vice president and head of programming Elaine Frontain Bryant, who has worked with Thinkfactory for years on “Gene Simmons Family Jewels” and other series, says one of the reasons they keep coming back to Thinkfactory for their new projects rather than spread the wealth is “Adam is there with the with the people” and “this business is built on relationships.”

“I think sometimes the heartland talent that you might approach aren’t the Hollywood types. And so it takes time and relationship building that I think Adam is doing. So the fact that we have such a longstanding relationship with him, and now he’s even gaining the trust of legacy organizations there, like the Grand Ole Opry and Universal Music Group is amazing.”

Bryant added: “I spent time on the ground with him last November, and he opened a lot of doors. And so I don’t know what other platforms are really doing in the heartland space, and good for them, but I do know that in this sector of programming, what really matters is relationships, and he’s putting his money where his mouth is, and living there and really making these relationships.”