BBC Worldwide Heads to MIPTV with New Formats

LONDON, April 5: BBC Worldwide will be at MIPTV this month
with an enhanced local production team and a raft of formats, headlined by new
offerings like Love Production’s Baby Borrowers alongside established hits such as Dancing with the Stars.

Baby Borrowers from
Love Production is an ambitious social experiment that sees five teenage
couples move in together for the first time with other people’s babies as they
discover whether they are up to the task of parenting. BBC Worldwide will also
bring People’s Quiz, from Fever
Media, which searches the nation for the best contestants for the ultimate quiz
showdown; Princess Productions’ Get Me The Producer, in which 12 young producer hopefuls vie for a 1-year
contract with a top production company; and its own original production, Panic
Room, featuring three hyper-phobics that
face their fears—whether it be snakes, rats, feet or spiders—using
expert therapy and exercise.

BBC Worldwide also plans to bring its successful format Dancing
with the Stars, which has already been
licensed to over 30 broadcasters throughout the world, with the majority now
into multiple seasons of the series. In the U.S. on ABC, the series launched
with the highest ever rating for a summer reality show; on Seven Network in
Australia, the series was the second highest-rated non-sport show ever in the
territory; in Italy on RAI, the final generated a 43 percent primetime
audience, and the second season launched on MTV3 in Finland last month with 60
percent audience share.

Wayne Garvie, BBC Worldwide’s director of content and
production, commented: “Local productions and formats are key to our growth
plans. With BBC Worldwide’s vast program offering, there are fantastic
opportunities to extend this to local versioning, not just with our
entertainment formats but also with scripted formats from our drama and comedy
catalogues. Our growing network of international partnerships and production
bases, together with our expertise in this field, gives us the ability to
create entirely new productions for our international audiences.”