Indie insights: Extending the ‘Financial Freeway’ and betting big on ‘HUMAN’ with Ben Zand

If you build it (and pay for it yourself), will they come? The self-commissioning model is daring brave indie bosses to find out.

Zandland’s HUMAN YouTube series

As UKTV factual commissioner Emile Nawagamuwa recently predicted in The Indie Hustle, production companies will self-fund and go direct to consumer in 2026 more than ever before “as a way to prove market value without waiting for a shrinking pool of traditional commissioning slots.”

One important case study, he observed, is the ongoing digital series HUMAN from Zandland, a slick collection of films fronted by Zandland founder and filmmaker Benjamin Zand. Its mission is to make unmissable programmes about controversial people and subcultures that build a community among its online audience.

But are enough viewers seeking out HUMAN on digital and social platforms to make it worth Zandland’s while?

Four months since the first film, a journey into a “whites-only” town in post-apartheid South Africa, dropped on YouTube, Zand tells us HUMAN is a bet that’s paid off, but not quite in the way you might expect.

Read on for Zand’s insights on:

• Why Zandland put its ITV doc series Breaking Ranks on YouTube internationally

• Building a digital audience that will eventually pay for your content

• How branded content helped to fund HUMAN films

• Why HUMAN’s success is in recurring audience numbers rather than digital revenue

• Why producers need to stop expecting overnight success from digital originals

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