Mega Hits

 

The top 50 European formats generated a value of $2 billion in 2011—and well over $800 million of that total was produced by just five U.K.-originated properties: Come Dine with Me, The Money Drop, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Dancing with the Stars and Got Talent.

 

The news, revealed in the latest TV Formats in Europe report—co-authored by the U.K.’s Essential Television Statistics, Madigan Cluff and Digital TV Research—raises questions every format player would like to hear answered: what makes a superformat? Is there an X factor? And how do these global franchises keep performing season after season after season?

 

With 4,126 hours produced and a value of $217.4 million, ITV Studios Global Entertainment’s (ITVS GE) Come Dine with Me was by far the top performing European TV format in the survey, trouncing its nearest rival, Endemol’s The Money Drop, by 3,511 hours and $46.2 million. And those are just two in a long list of envy-inducing statistics. Come Dine with Me, now on air in 36 territories and counting, continues to draw massive audiences. It was up 83 percent on W Network Canada’s prime-time average in 2012; outperformed Channel 4 U.K.’s slot average by 65 percent in 2011, and consistently wins its time slot on Sweden’s TV4.

 

Not bad for a little dinner-party contest that launched on Channel 4 in 2005 with a view to amusing older audiences. “Which it did,” says Mike Beale, the director of international formats at ITV Studios. “But they found it was also pulling in a much younger audience, so it was being endorsed by the whole of the U.K.’s viewing population.”

 

Before long, Come Dine with Me was also being endorsed by the viewers of M6 in France and VOX in Germany. Both broadcasters’ access prime-time schedules were filled with drama, “but they found this small factual-entertainment show was pulling in the same audiences—at a lower cost,” Beale adds. The good news spread. Local versions were soon on air across Europe—Western and Eastern—Scandinavia, North America and the Middle East. Globo in Brazil bought the format in 2012, marking its first foray into Latin America. And this year sees the launch of the first Asian production on STAR TV in India. In Australia, the format is in its fourth season on The LifeStyle Channel on FOXTEL.

 

Beale believes Come Dine with Me’s appeal is rooted in the universal phenomenon of nosiness—the irresistible desire to see what your neighbors are doing and how they are doing it. “People like the chance to snoop around other people’s houses and show off their homes and cooking skills,” he says.

 

This may explain why the show is even a hit in Turkey, where there is no culture of the pot-luck dinner. “The format was deemed extremely risky at the start,” Beale adds, “but they are now hitting nearly 1,000 episodes.”

Come Dine with Me averages around 120 episodes a year, or two seasons of 12 weeks, in most territories. Beale says that while the basic show “recipe” is sacrosanct, the format is kept fresh with tweaks and special weeks. For example, M6 in France, which has now passed the 2,000-episode mark, used the show to launch a national healthy-eating campaign.

 

The brand is also bolstered in the U.K. and France by merchandise programs spanning mobile, publishing and promotional tie-ins, as well as tableware, kitchenware, utensils, accessories and games. “And we’re looking into the potential for social activity around both the cooking and dining elements of the show,” adds Trudi Hayward, ITVS GE’s senior VP and global head of merchandise.

 

The youngest member of the European formats super-league, Endemol’s The Money Drop, has enjoyed a meteoric rise since it launched on Channel 4 in May 2010 as The Million Pound Drop. The TV Formats in Europe report found that the white-knuckle game show, in which contestants can win a million in cash or walk away empty-handed, was screened for 615 hours in 2011, generating $171.2 million in value.

 

But according to David Flynn, the managing director of the Endemol production company Remarkable Television—and creator and executive producer of the concept—it was clear from the get-go that The Money Drop was that rarest of TV beasts: an instant prime-time hit. “We sold it to Channel 4 very quickly,” he recalls. “We did a basic run-through for them with a cardboard box and a stack of pound coins. That was at the end of 2009 and we were in production by January 2010.”

 

Even before the show launched in the U.K., international interest was mounting, both within the Endemol group and among Europe’s key broadcasters. Indeed, Endemol France was in production with a pilot for TF1 six days after the show’s Channel 4 debut.

 

By the end of 2010, it had rolled out into the U.S., Germany, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Hungary and Greece, with more buyers coming on board by the week. Today, The Money Drop has been sold to 45 territories, from Norway to Nigeria. It has passed the 100-episode milestone in the U.K. and is into multiple series in, among other places, Turkey, Russia, Poland, Kazakh­stan, Switzerland, France and Germany. It is, in other words, a good old-fashioned global hit.

 

Only there’s nothing old-fashioned about it. Social media is at the hub of the BAFTA-winning concept, with contestants recruited on Facebook and Twitter, and viewers at home integrated into the action via play-along and second-screen games. At the last count, well over 30 million games had been played on PCs, smartphones and tablets by some 18 million people across 15 territories. In less than one month in the U.K. alone, there were more than 1 million downloads for The Money Drop iOS app.

 

But if The Money Drop’s execution is thoroughly modern, its inspiration was anything but. Flynn remembers the day the muse struck: “I had to pay for something in cash and I suddenly realized we don’t touch money very much these days. It got me thinking that game shows don’t use real cash—just a figure on a screen. I thought it would be much more powerful to actually have the money there in the studio, because real money has a strange alchemy.”

 

The next moment of inspiration was the decision to break the game-show rule that states the prize pot must increase with success. Flynn’s twist is that contestants start off with £1 million and then proceed to lose it over the course of the show. “I love the fact the money becomes more valuable psychologically as the finish line comes closer. That sense of the money increasing in value even as it decreases is fascinating,” he adds.

 

Flynn calls The Money Drop “one of the new generation of formats” in that it has been designed to evolve, unlike the classic game-show formats of yesterday, which were built for exact replication. “My instinct is that it’s really important to keep surprising audiences,” he says. “That means trying new things, learning lessons in one territory and applying them to others, borrowing techniques from reality, adding variations to the core concept…. In the end, it has to feel like an event, so we’ll do whatever we can to make it special.”

 

Nobody could call Europe’s third most valuable format, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, next-generation, but as the “game show that helped define the game show in the modern era,” to quote Keith Le Goy, Sony Pictures Television’s (SPT) president of international distribution, it doesn’t have to be. It is also still doing the business—$165.2 million of it in 2011, according to the TV Formats in Europe report—nearly 15 years after it launched on ITV1 in September 1998.

 

So how did a U.K. quiz become a worldwide cultural phenomenon, spawn 119 versions in 88 languages, inspire an Oscar-winning movie in the form of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire and embed itself so deeply into the global consciousness, that, as Le Goy says, “audiences from Buenos Aires to Brussels to Beijing know the meaning of ‘phone a friend’”?

 

Colman Hutchinson, the creative director at Boxatricks who, as head of entertainment at Celador, executive produced five seasons of Millionaire, puts it like this: “I think it’s probably as close to the perfect format as you can get. In all the years I was involved with Millionaire, I never found a flaw. In terms of game play, it’s watertight—and it’s also great drama. Watching somebody make a huge, life-changing amount of money in front of your eyes is compelling television; and so is watching somebody lose a huge amount of life-changing money. When Millionaire is good, it’s very, very good.”

 

For the first eight years of its life, Millionaire was produced by Celador. The U.K. production company was acquired by 2waytraffic in 2006, which was in turn acquired by SPT in 2008. SPT now owns and distributes Millionaire.

 

Le Goy says there are still eager buyers for the evergreen format, the latest additions to the “Millionaire club” being Afghanistan, Cambodia and the Ivory Coast. “It also enjoys fantastic renewal rates, with many countries now into double figures,” he adds. “Around 30 versions of Millionaire are on air at any one time.”

 

In terms of keeping the brand engaging and relevant, Le Goy cites live episodes, celebrity charity specials and the spin-off Millionaire Hot Seat, currently one of the top-rating shows on Nine Network in Australia. “The first live broadcast of Millionaire in the U.K.—at Christmas 2010—trounced all opposition, with nearly 7 million viewers and a 26-percent audience share,” he says.

 

Then, of course, there are the countless console, website and board games, mobile apps, books and DVDs, all of which reflect and reinforce Millionaire’s super-brand status. “Likewise, social media has given our partners around the world a new route to build up significant fan communities,” Le Goy adds.

 

Hutchinson calls Millionaire the first “wildfire format.” It was, he maintains, the show that pioneered the way for the likes of Idol and Strictly Come Dancing. “It proved that, if you have a really good show, the world will want to watch it.”

 

Fitting that description to the last pointed toe and sequined frock is the fourth show on the TV Formats in Europe ranking: Strictly Come Dancing, the jewel in the BBC’s light-entertainment crown. Known internationally as Dancing with the Stars (DWTS), the show made its debut on BBC One in May 2004. That was rapidly followed by launches across Europe. It has now waltzed into 43 countries, from China to Chile. Most spectacular has been its success in the U.S., where it premiered on ABC in 2005. Now in its 16th season, DWTS continues to be the network’s most-watched entertainment show, commanding live viewing audiences for its recent All-Stars edition of 16.5-million-plus for the finale.

 

“The continuing success of the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing is a key factor in making the format so desirable to international broadcasters,” says Richard Halliwell, BBC Worldwide’s commercial director for DWTS. He adds that Strictly, now in its tenth season, was the U.K.’s highest-rated program of 2012, excluding one-offs such as the Olympics, Euro 2012 and the Diamond Jubilee Concert.

 

DWTS’s appeal, Halliwell believes, lies in its warmth and accessibility. “It really is all about the dance,” he says. “It provides a unique opportunity to see supremely confident stars at the very height of their profession thrown in at the deep end. From the moment they walk into that rehearsal room, they are no longer in control. From then on, it’s a rollercoaster ride. The viewer really does go on a journey with the contestant as they progress through the competition.”

 

Halliwell says he is conscious, and encouraging, of the cultural differences that give rise to variations in DWTS’s local incarnations. “This drives innovation and experimentation,” he adds. “By any measure, our U.S. production is huge and the show is also broadcast twice a year. Much innovation is therefore driven from here and exported to our other productions.”

 

When it comes to consumer products, BBC Worldwide remains cautious. “DWTS is not really a souvenir brand,” Halliwell observes. “This is event TV. It’s special and of the moment and viewers don’t necessarily want reminders once the event has culminated.”

 

Exceptions to the rule are DVDs recapping past seasons, cosmetics designed by the U.K. show’s make-up artist, and a line of eveningwear in the U.S. “Anything we do has to feel authentic and demonstrate a genuine connection with the show,” Halliwell adds. “And yes,” he admits, “we have done self-tan.”

 

The live-event space is also booming, with more than 2 million tickets sold to a DWTS performance. Also proving popular are Strictly Cruises, which BBC Worldwide launched in the U.K. last year in partnership with P&O Cruises.

 

So what’s the next step for DWTS? Halliwell says an online social game is currently in beta mode, and that the BBC is exploring new camera technology, specifically 360-degree cameras that can be controlled by the viewer to follow, for example, the backstage action or the judges’ deliberations.

 

On the commercial front, new funding models are also moving up the agenda. In January, the first ad-funded version launched on Channel 7 Thailand in association with the Amari Hotel Group. “We’ve seen other production companies and formats take advantage of these alternative funding models across Asia and South America in particular,” Halliwell says. “That’s something we are looking to replicate.”

 

FremantleMedia/Syco Entertainment’s Got Talent has been watched by some 460 million viewers in 54 territories. According to Eurodata TV Worldwide, it was the best performing format in the world in 2011 and has bagged 40 number one spots, either in terms of territory or channel, since it launched in 2006.

 

And it shows no sign of slowing down. In 2012, it was the U.K.’s number one entertainment series and in the U.S. the number one summer series for the sixth consecutive year. Last year also saw it launch on TV ONE New Zealand; and Citytv Canada, where its debut episode outperformed the channel’s prime-time average by 242 percent.

 

Interestingly, however, Got Talent did not enjoy a particularly auspicious start. Rob Clark, FremantleMedia’s director of global entertainment development, admits that the initial ITV pilot, which took the form of a stand-alone talent show, “really didn’t rock anybody’s boat.” He adds, “At the time, everybody was saying that variety was dead. We thought they were wrong, but that we hadn’t made the right kind of variety show.”

 

The turning point was the decision to reinvent the format as an interactive talent search rather than a talent showcase. FremantleMedia sold the concept to the U.S., where America’s Got Talent launched triumphantly on NBC in June 2006. A year later, the revamped format was back on ITV in the U.K., carrying all before it and “ticking every box you could possibly want for a launch around the world,” Clark notes.

 

And around the world it duly went, delighting audiences from Asia to Africa, from Latin America to the Benelux. “Some formats work well in the U.S. and Europe,” Clark says. “But Got Talent just works for everyone, everywhere. Geographically, there’s nothing patchy about its success.”

 

Clark says it has been a case of evolution rather than revolution in terms of keeping the format fresh and enjoying “the highest renewal rates of any show I’ve ever had my sticky paws on.” The judging lineup is changed regularly and talent “disciplines” that prove popular in one territory—Eastern European-style gymnastics, for example—are fed through to others. Live shows also play a big part in keeping audiences engaged, as does YouTube, which has logged well over 2 billion hits for Got Talent acts.

 

Got Talent, Clark believes, is the ultimate family show. “It’s reinvented a traditional art form—variety—as a modern TV show. People love seeing a stand-up comedian followed by an opera singer, a ballet dancer and a bloke who can play the piano fantastically. It’s a laugh, but it can also be very moving and emotional. I love watching it and I’ve loved watching it grow around the world.”