Television documentary

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Television documentaries are televised media productions that screen documentaries. Television documentaries exist either as a television documentary series or as a television documentary film.

• Television documentary series, sometimes called docuseries, are television series screened within an ordered collection of two or more televised episodes.
• Television documentary films exist as a singular documentary film to be broadcast via a documentary channel or a news-related channel. Occasionally, documentary films that were initially intended for televised broadcasting may be screened in a cinema.

Documentary television rose to prominence during the 1940s, spawning from earlier cinematic documentary filmmaking ventures. Early production techniques were highly inefficient compared to modern recording methods. Early television documentaries typically featured historical, wartime, investigative or event-related subject matter. Contemporary television documentaries have extended to include celebrity, sporting, travel, economic and wildlife subjects.

Many television documentaries have created controversy and debate surrounding ethical, cultural, social and political concerns. Controversy has also arisen regarding the current formatting of televised documentary series, as well as the contextualisation of televised documentaries broadcast via contemporary streaming services.