“Television Adventure with a Purpose”

This is how Earth Report series producer Robert Lamb describes Dropping In a proposal to BBC Airtime Sales. “2003 is the 100th anniversary of powered flight and our team will be taking to the skies to get a bird’s eye view of the people and places who are doing their bit to save the environment”.

New science and promising new approaches to conservation will be featured in the debut series premiering on BBC World to 220 million homes worldwide.

Navigator in the sky for Dropping In will be incorrigible enthusiast Richard Creasey, best know to TV viewers worldwide through Overland Challenge, a three month journey from London to New York via Siberia.

Richard will pilot his own camera-equipped Microlight plane. He’s donating his time and aircraft to the project.

Richard’s guide on the ground will be Dudu Douglas-Hamilton. Drawing on the network of contacts and goodwill built up by the Earth Report team over 5 years, Dudu will be on terra firma as Richard drops in on inspiring people across the globe who have inspiring stories to share with the BBC’s viewers.

As a project backed by the United Nations Environment Programme, we will be using its imprimatur to get clearance to fly over a range of far-flung locations.

Earth Report has assembled a small and dedicated team to sift out the positive stories, locations and permissions.

Under consideration:-

• Tomb of the Mayas – Freshly discovered Mayan tombs have been found in Northern Guatemala’s threatened rainforest. Local TV personality Vida La Paz is raising funds to create a private reserve
• Coffee Not Bushmeat. Karl Amman, the Swiss defender of Africa's endangered apes, is a good example of a 'charismatic local expert'. He is in the Central African Republic where he has persuaded a Dutch millionaire to start up a coffee export business as an alternative to bushmeat poaching, and on top of this Karl has started to convince sceptical scientists that he's found a new sub-species of chimpanzee.
• Possums vs Parrots in Middle Earth - Location for Lord of the Rings, the spectacular shots of an unspoilt New Zealand are misleading. There's a last ditch battle going on to save what remains of the Island's native wildife from alien invadors. The biggest is from Australian possums - 20 times the size of the human population and eating their way through the native forest. Richard and his team might also 'drop in on' the scientist Douglas Adams featured in 'Last Chance to See' and see he extraordinary Kayapo has been brought back from the brink of extinction
• Land of the Dinosaur – One of the last relics of the grassless environment of the dinosaurs is the ancient pine forest of Chile (location for the BBC blockbuster Walking with Dinosaurs). Doug Thompson sold off his outdoor equipment firm to ensure that the habitat does not suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs that once occupied it.

At every location Dudu will invite the scientist and conservation campaigners to take to the air in the Microlight with Richard. “They’ll get a different perspective on their corner of the world”, says Creasey “They act locally but up in the air we’ll want them to think globally to get our viewers to do likewise”.

The aim is to achieve economies of scale by filming 26 episodes at one go for transmission in 2003 and 2004.

Kick-starting all this is BBCi’s huge h2g2 community which will suggest subjects, help with the initial research and follow up progress. Dropping In will consequently be fully interrogated into the world wide web via the BBC's biggest community site which currently gets over 5 million hits a month.

There will be parallel coverage on TVE’s web-site that has 400,000 hits from Earth Report viewers each month.

“We’ve analysed the visitors to our site seeking more information” says Lamb “They are predominantly the movers and shakers, teachers, environmental leaders, businesspeople with a conscience – they are looking for enabling information provided by our back-up service.”

Transmissions will not end with the BBC. The programmes will be put on TVE’s distribution network focussing on developing countries. TVE supplied programmes have regular slots on TV stations from China to Chile and from Nepal to Nigeria.

“Programmes that do well can reach up to 700 million TV homes” says Lamb. “We intend to repeat the success we had with the Earth Report Roadshows which have been shown by TV stations in some 34 countries after first transmisson on BBC World”.