Got the Talent

June 13, 2011 World Screen

This article originally appeared in the MIPTV 2011 edition of TV Formats.

Singing and dancing competitions have remained popular prime-time staples, and are entering their next phase of evolution.

Week after week, season after season, talent competitions continue to take top billing on a number of the world’s biggest broadcasters. These shows have proved their staying power by consistently drawing huge numbers of viewers, making them must-have tent-pole programs for advertiser-hungry networks.
 
The genre’s enduring appeal is epitomized by Idols. One of the most successful entertainment formats ever launched, Idols hit the air in 2001 and has since broadcast 167 series across 44 territories, scoring a solid track record of success in each country along the way. The singing competition is currently the most-watched TV series in the U.S. and is the only program to hold on to that coveted spot for seven consecutive seasons.
 
In order to maintain its success over the years, the format has had a few facelifts. “Idols has its tenth birthday this year, which is actually fairly old for a format, but it certainly doesn’t look its age,” says Rob Clark, the president of worldwide entertainment at FremantleMedia. “Any format within that period of time will have had tweaks and changes, and Idols remails enormously popular because we’ve made sure it still feels fresh,” he says, noting that the core structure has always remained intact.
 
“In terms of the people, what they sing, how it’s shot, how it’s edited, it looks very different,” explains Clark. “That’s because the industry has moved on. What viewers expect has moved on. If you look at the live shows, they have used new sets, new technology, new camera angles, new songs.” Other changes have included expanding the age limit for contestants and adjusting the number of judges on the panel. “You’re looking at a format which has not been kept in formaldehyde, which has been allowed to be tweaked to keep it relevant around the world,” Clark adds.
 
THE TOTAL PACKAGE
FremantleMedia’s catalogue features a number of formats with a talent-competition angle, many of which have become megahits. The X Factor, a search for the next pop star, is among the biggest TV talent competitions in Europe. The format has aired in 23 countries, often rating as the number one show. After more than half a decade at the top of British television, The X Factor is making its way to the U.S. this fall.
 
“The X Factor is an enormous entertainment spectacle,” Clark says. “It’s driven at its heart by the competition between the judges and the scale of the production. The auditions in America will take place in huge arenas. People who have never sung on a stage before, they’ll come out and face those superstar judges, the thousands of people in the arena, and it’s daunting. From a viewer experience, it’s spectacular.”
 
Another FremantleMedia format, Got Talent, features contestants showcasing a broader range of skills and performance styles. “It has huge figures around the world,” says Clark. “It’s pretty much in every major market and most minor markets at the moment and was 2010’s most successful travelling format.”
 
While talent competitions have proved to be successful for FremantleMedia, Clark admits that there was a time when many believed the song-and-dance showcase was gone from TV for good. “When I was a young producer, I was told that we’d never have singing or dancing on television again, by very wise people,” he recalls. “Look how wrong they were.”
 
DANCE FEVER
Indeed, dancing competitions have shown themselves as a force to be reckoned with. Among the most successful is BBC Worldwide’s Strictly Come Dancing, sold internationally as Dancing with the Stars. Having started as an amateur competition for ballroom dancing, the show was catapulted to new heights with the idea to use celebrity contestants. In 2010, the popular dance show was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s most successful reality-TV format. It has been sold to more than 35 countries around the world, with more than a quarter of a billion people estimated to have watched some version of the program since it was launched. “It’s sold to some of the biggest broadcasters in the world,” says Elin Thomas, the VP of format sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at BBC Worldwide. “An interesting thing about the format is that here we are quite a number of years since the original show premiered and we’re still doing firsts,” adds Duncan Cooper, the executive producer for formats and local productions at BBC Worldwide. “We had Albania, Greece and Vietnam last year, and we’ve got France and Indonesia coming out in a couple of months. It’s still selling!”
 
Along with the celebrity allure, a key part of the format’s success is its universal themes. “The music is a big element, and one of the things that makes it work is a combination of the traditional dancing and the modern music,” says Cooper.
 
Each country has its own unique flavor in this regard, and the show is easily adapted to incorporate the local styles. Cooper notes examples of India’s Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, which features Bollywood dance numbers, and Bulgaria’s Dancing Stars, which has traditional folk dancing alongside more modern routines.
 
Televisa Internacional has put its own spin on the music-and-dance competition genre, with titles such as Singing for a Dream, Dancing for a Dream and Dancing for the Wedding of My Dreams. “If you win any of these competitions, you will have the chance to change the life of a loved one,” explains José Luis Romero, the director of formats and new content at Televisa. “There is no money or flashy prizes involved, just the goodwill to make a difference in someone’s life. That’s our plus.”
 
These formats have been produced in a range of territories, from Latin America (Ecuador, Costa Rica, Peru) to Eastern Europe (Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania). Most of the pickups have been from free-TV stations, Romero notes, and the formats are nearly always placed in prime time.
 
Romero says the shows get a great response from audiences, since they tap into viewers’ personal dreams and motivations. Maintaining a loyal audience is just one of the benefits these formats can offer a broadcaster, he points out. “They open a wide window for ancillary business, and they also promote the broadcaster’s altruistic and goodwill image.”
 
GO TO THE PROS
The combination of music and dance has also translated into success for Strix International’s Floor Filler. The show features 12 young men and women who hone their talents with the help of professionals at a dance academy.
 
“Floor Filler is vastly different compared to other dance and talent shows on the market,” says Mia Engström, the director of Strix International. “Most dance-based formats consist of a weekly prime-time show, but with Floor Filler the format is stripped five days a week with a weekly prime-time dance-off.” She adds, “By offering viewers shiny floors, glamour and setting up a dance academy with professional dance teachers, we get to know and follow the dancers’ hardships and their daily struggles to become the nation’s best dancer.”
 
Engström says that the format can play across daytime, access prime or prime time, and is suitable for either free TV or pay TV. “The show provides a strong lead-in to the right target groups and builds a strong brand that hopefully will last for several seasons, thus giving the broadcaster a faithful audience that tunes in every day on various platforms.”
 
In an evolution of the dance genre, ITV Studios Global Entertainment’s Dancing on Ice takes contestants away from the dance floor and onto a more challenging performance space. Tobi de Graaff, ITV’s director of global television distribution, explains: “Dancing on Ice takes celebrities through an incredible journey; most of them have never even danced before, let alone on ice. The show is an impressive investment of time and energy; we see celebrities’ triumphs, their disappointments and their physical transformation. For many, we also witness them overcoming their fear of performing on ice, something the audience can easily relate to.”
 
He continues, “It is this, along with the scale and quality of production and pure show-business glamour, that sets Dancing on Ice apart from other formats in the genre.”
 
SIZE MATTERS
Dancing on Ice is an ambitious large-scale production, which is why its broadcasters use it as a prime-time anchor for the season. However, producing a show of this size isn’t feasible for all broadcasters, de Graaff admits. “Not everyone can work on the same budget. However, our expectations for the program remain high. So our job is to go the extra mile to come up with a budget and a show which delivers on the quality of production we and our customers expect from the Dancing on Ice brand and ITV Studios’ formats.”
 
Not all dance formats are as costly to produce. An example of this is MTV Networks International’s (MTVNI) Dance Cam Slam, a new multiplatform competition series from VH1 making its debut at MIPTV. “For VH1 and all our broadcast licensees around the world, it’s fantastic because they can actually get into the forum of doing talent shows in a way that’s [less risky],” says Caroline Beaton, MTVNI’s senior VP of international program sales. “Dance Cam Slam has got a proven track record. We’ve got the infrastructure to cast it and run it and can do it in a way that’s cost-effective, and then broadcasters can make the in-studio piece as ambitious as they want, depending on what slot they’re looking at.”
 
Unlike most dance shows on the market, Dance Cam Slam has its genesis in the digital world. Contestants upload their dance auditions to the show’s website and ten are chosen to compete live each week using their home web cam. The at-home audience votes via text message, and can also comment through Twitter and possibly even have their tweets appear during the show.
 
Beaton says, however, that even though it’s not as costly to produce, “there’s no reason this wouldn’t go head-to-head with some of the really ambitious and established dance formats around the world and talent slots. It could also be a much more kind of niche, late-night play. There’s no market where it wouldn’t work….The fact that it’s so affordable [means] there’s not going to be a shortage of materials. So for a broadcaster who wants a daily slot filled and who wants to build up loyalty in that way, this would be a really good show.”
 
At-home interactivity is a trend that’s been increasingly popular for TV’s singing-and-dancing talent competitions. For its tenth season, American Idol extended its audition process online to MySpace for the first time ever. Also, The X Factor is in talks to open up voting to the web via Facebook and its more than 500 million members.
 
As technology continues to shape the way viewers interact with programming, these formats will no doubt also adapt to their media-savvy audiences, adding another innovative element to keep the talent-competition genre fresh and viewers plugged in to their favorite formats.