Studio Lambert’s Stephen Lambert

Best known for such hits as Wife Swap, The Secret Millionaire and, more recently, Undercover Boss, Stephen Lambert has been in the business of successfully formatting shows for some time now. With his latest venture, Studio Lambert, set up with ALL3MEDIA some three years ago, Lambert is continuing his legacy with a new crop of shows, including The Fairy Jobmother, which was commissioned by Lifetime in the U.S. and Channel 4 in the U.K. As CEO of the transatlantic outfit, he is keen to ensure all Studio Lambert titles have strong international legs. He talks to TV Formats about executing that strategy.

TV FORMATS: How much of an advantage is it to have production offices in both the U.K. and U.S.?

LAMBERT: If your focus is to make programs in America, then to have a pipeline of ideas coming from the U.K. makes all the difference. I think that Britain is the best place in the world to sell a paper idea for a format, probably because of the way in which British broadcasting has developed over the last 30 or 40 years. There’s a great pressure to innovate and broadcasters expect to buy formats from paper.

Also, because of the way in which the relationship between the independent producers and the broadcasters has developed, the rights situation on those ideas is very good for the independents. They’re in a position where they can then take those format rights and sell them around the world, and if you have production capacity in the States, you can then make those formats in the States. It’s a tremendous advantage for producers in the U.S. who have that connection to the U.K., compared to producers in America who don’t. If you’re developing a paper format in the U.S. and pitch to American buyers, they’re pretty resistant to recognizing a paper format as a format.

 

TV FORMATS: How are the development and pitching processes different in the U.S. and in Britain?

LAMBERT: The pitching process and the development processes are quite different. In the British market, a lot of the buyers like to develop the program with you, so you will often have meetings with broadcasters where you pretty much create an idea together. You might have a notion and then they like working it through with you. As a result, understandably, they expect you to keep the idea just with them while you’re developing it.

Whereas in the States, there’s much more of a sense that you have to have your idea very clearly defined, and that you will then take that idea to all the buyers at once. In fact, buyers in the U.S. expect to hear all ideas, and they get very irritated if they haven’t had an opportunity to bid for an idea. In Britain, that isn’t the case; you would expect that lots of ideas are only offered to one buyer. If that buyer wants one they will start working on it with you and the other broadcasters never get to hear [about] it.

 

TV FORMATS: What are the greatest differences between the British and American adaptations of your formats?

LAMBERT: In terms of adapting, there are obvious stylistic differences. Broadcast networks in America generally don’t like having commentary, with a narrator explaining what’s going on. They like to have the characters tell their own stories. The programs are also shorter, so consequently they have to move that much faster. And there are more commercial breaks, so there’s a greater need to have cliffhangers that will take you across those ad breaks.

When adapting formats for American TV, everything in the show has to be directly communicated to the audience; there’s less tolerance of ambiguity in America. It has to be very clear as to what point, factual or emotional, that you’re trying to make.

There’s also a big difference as to what kinds of programs work. The British audience tends to be more cynical. Britain could never have a show like West Wing, for instance. You couldn’t do a drama about the British Prime Minister that was essentially a celebration of “the gang” around the Prime Minister. In Britain you could only do a scripted show about the Prime Minister that was a satire or that was essentially critical of the political system. You couldn’t have something that was celebratory of it.

 

TV FORMATS: How didThe Fairy Jobmother manage to strike a chord with audiences on both sides of the Atlantic?

LAMBERT: There are differences [in the appeal of the show in both territories]. The British tabloid newspapers have a long tradition of running stories on people who are living on [welfare] benefits and questioning whether they are "scroungers" refusing to work and living off benefits. That doesn’t exist in the same way in America. So, it makes the shows different and the appeal of Fairy Jobmother in both territories is different.

In Britain people like to make a judgment about whether these people are serious about wanting to find a job or whether they are actually happy to stay on benefits. That is of less interest to American viewers because people aren’t thinking that way. There is a much greater assumption in America that everyone wants to get a job.