Rob Clark of FremantleMedia

Rob-Clark-FMFremantleMedia has long been a powerhouse in the formats business, with a catalog that boasts such long-running global hits as Idols, Got Talent and The X Factor. The company arrived at MIPCOM with what Rob Clark, director of global entertainment, dubbed its “Jekyll and Hyde” slate, delivering “heartland” shows that buyers know and love alongside noisy new concepts like Families Gone Wild and 100% Hotter. Clark shares with World Screen some of the company’s new highlights, weighs in on the enduring game-show market and discusses what it takes to keep a brand on the air, season after season.

WS: You had a diverse slate at MIPCOM.
CLARK: I can honestly say we’ve never had such a fabulous response to our slate. Before the market I called it the “Jekyll and Hyde” slate. It had some heartland FremantleMedia programs—Cue the Music, Sidewalk Karaoke, Wedding Cake Challenge, and the big game-show schedule we were telling people about. That seemed very FremantleMedia. What wasn’t so FremantleMedia, and, I think, surprised a lot of our broadcasters, was the other side of the slate: the Mr. Hyde side. And that was Get the F*ck Out of My House, Families Gone Wild, 100% Hotter and The Lie Detective. These were much edgier than any shows FremantleMedia has brought to a market in the past. And while I don’t think the whole range appealed to any one broadcaster, it did appeal to broadcast groups, so major channels and their smaller offspring as a whole, and to different broadcasters. Some liked half of it, some liked the other half. It was really interesting seeing which broadcasters liked which.

WS: Is there still strong demand for game shows?
CLARK: You and I have grown up with game shows, we’ve probably seen them come and go at least three times. Millennials, which is a sweet spot for a lot of broadcasters, have never seen game shows in prime time. That idea of a constructed studio show is really fresh for them. So game shows all of a sudden are very vogue, they’re very fashionable again. And you could see that this year on ABC. The Sunday night schedule, which had FremantleMedia’s Match Game and Celebrity Family Feud, was a huge success. We’ve been replicating that with broadcasters around the world, with different shows from our catalog. We have one of the biggest game-show catalogs of classics like The Price is Right, Family Feud, etc. And also we’ve got new shows—we’re still investing in developing game shows. We still feel that it’s a very rich area for television. For digital exposure, games work well. For app play-along, they’re probably the best that you’ve got. So really, the original television show, which had not been transposed from the theater or the radio, has become the latest vogue in modern broadcasting.

WS: What are some of your key returning shows?
CLARK: One of the great things about looking after—being the curator of, if you like—the FremantleMedia catalog is that we’ve got such depth in shows. So it’s very nice having a show that’s older than me—The Price is Right is 60 years old this year. And you can see, even in the period that I’ve been at FremantleMedia, which is now 13 years, we’ve had two waves of game shows. [The popularity of] Family Feud came back in early 2006. And now it’s coming back again. We’re having huge success with Idols, the daddy of all the music shows. It came back this year after eight years in Holland with huge success. We’ve sold it again in Scandinavian territories where it’s not been on. And it will probably be on air in many countries where it was on and it hasn’t been on for a while. And I think that’s because of its purity. It’s not a very gimmicky show. It’s the original Cinderella music show. And that seems to have found a resonance with the broadcasters at the moment. Even in that area we’re finding what I consider quite a new show—it was around when I was here—coming back.

WS: Any other trends you’re seeing?
CLARK: We made a number of investments in creative people and setting them up in their own companies and part-owning their business. We’re seeing, from our internal pipeline, the benefits of that. At MIPCOM you would have seen 100% Hotter and Families Gone Wild from Naked Entertainment, which is Simon Andreae’s company. They were very well received by our people around the world and from their broadcasters. So I’m expecting news on that front. And I can see what’s in the pipeline from all of those new people and new companies that we’re associated with now. And that’s very exciting for the future because they’ve got great shows.