Nat Geo Plots Two Specials To Pair With ‘Valley Of The Boom’ – TCA

National Geographic Channel has taken the wraps off a pair of specials to surround its upcoming limited series Valley of the Boom, greenlighting the two-hour special Inside the Internet and six-part docu-series 1989: The Year That Made the Modern Word.

The new specials, unveiled today during Nat Geo’s portion of summer TCA, will act as companions to Valley of the Boom, STXtv’s ensemble drama from Matthew Carnahan that charts the meteoric rise and cataclysmic burst of the dot-com bubble. Bradley Whitford, Steve Zahn and Lamorne Morris lead the cast of the six-part series, which is aiming for a winter premiere.

Inside the Internet will explore the ways the web has changed the very fabric of our society in the past five decades, highlighted by interviews with the founders of AOL, Craigsist, Friendster, Match.com and Tinder. Brian Lovet and Cheryl Horner of National Geographic Studios are producing, with Betsy Forhan exec producing.

The 1989 mini will explore the most consequential events of 1989 touching on the tabloid news culture, the birth of the Internet and the corporatization of the media media industry. National Geographic Studios is producing in association with the Intellectual Property Corporation for Nat Geo, with IPC’s Aaron Saidman, Eli Holzman and Rory Karpf executive producing with NGS’ Brian Lovett. Forhan is EP.

Valley of the Boom will center on the turbulent ride of three companies whose founders were trying to change the world using the new technology of the Internet. Before Google,
Netscape pioneered the first commercial web browser and launched the “browser wars” with
Microsoft. Before Facebook, theglobe.com was a rapidly expanding social networking site built
by dreamers on a college campus. And before YouTube, a con artist on the run from the FBI
reinvented himself in Silicon Valley to start a streaming video company called Pixelon, resulting in an entrepreneurial rise and fall almost too insane to be believed.