Tried and True

October 2006

Faced with slumping ratings and the flight of younger viewers to other media, mainstream broadcasters are fighting back with an idea from the dawn of television—live studio prime-time extravaganzas. In the process, they are breathing new life into big variety and game-show formats that in recent years had been chased off prime-time schedules in many markets by reality fare.

“In the digital age, it is the big idea that grabs viewer attention,” Wayne Garvie, the director of content and production at BBC Worldwide, says when asked why lavishly produced studio shows like the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, sold internationally as Dancing with the Stars, have been so popular. “When Dancing with the Stars arrived on the scene, it was something absolutely different. It was a very glamorous program at a time when there were a lot of reality shows that were quite negative about the human experience. It took a world that had been forgotten, ballroom dancing, and a very traditional form of entertainment, variety, and merged them with aspects of reality programming to come up with something new and exciting.”

“The ebb and flow of what is fashionable on television is definitely back towards the big studio shows again,” adds Rob Clark, the senior executive VP of entertainment and production for worldwide entertainment at FremantleMedia, which has profited from the trend with shows like Idols and The X Factor. “The tide is definitely flowing towards [game shows and variety shows], but we aren’t anywhere near the peak yet,” Clark says.

That could hurt the reality-TV business, some argue. “Everyone is looking for feel-good shows that can be adapted to local markets,” explains Tim Mutimer, the director of sales at Granada International, which sells Dancing on Ice and Soapstar Superstar. “There is a big trend away from the more negative programming [seen in] some of the reality shows. The trouble with these negative reality shows is that each season you have to get more and more of an edge in order to engage viewers. Now there is a backlash against that. Audiences want entertainment that will actually entertain them.”

Yet few believe that variety shows will push reality shows off the schedule—Big Brother and a number of reality formats continue to be widely produced around the world.

“Reality has become an established genre, it isn’t going away,” says Michel Rodrigue, the CEO and president of Distraction. “But there is less demand for voyeurism and more demand for game shows.”

“Variety had been very popular in Europe for decades and it never really went away in some of the big European markets like France and Spain,” adds Granada’s Mutimer. “But now all of Europe is very keen on large variety shows and there is a lot of interest in Eastern European and Russian territories. We’re doing Dancing on Ice in Slovakia, for example.”

Even bigger demand, most argue, can be seen for game shows. “The big boom is in game shows,” says Mike Morley, the senior executive director of commercial and creative at Endemol International. “Since Deal or No Deal worked so well for NBC in the U.S., there really has been enormous demand for the big game show in the U.S., the U.K. and many other territories.”

“We believed, even in the years when people weren’t as interested in buying game shows, that they would come back,” says Clark at FremantleMedia, which has a huge library of game shows that includes The Price Is Right. “We still had the formats and the staff that knew how to do these shows, and now that they’re coming back, we’re working with a whole new generation of producers to bring them to new audiences.”

21ST CENTURY VARIETY

But Clark and others are quick to add that the new wave of hit variety and prime-time game shows have moved light years away from the Saturday night extravaganzas of broadcast television in the 1960s and 1970s. Many rely on high-tech gadgetry and cutting-edge new-media marketing techniques, drawing on mobile phones, the Internet, podcasts, virtual communities and the blogosphere to attract the younger viewers advertisers crave.

The most popular live prime-time formats also merge traditional studio entertainment with variety elements. “The newer formats have competitive, reality-show elements that grab people and make them feel involved in the outcome of the show,” notes Granada’s Mutimer. “Then, after watching the live show, they can go online to watch episodes they missed or see content that wasn’t on the television shows. They can download clips, ring tones or wallpaper to their mobile phone and buy DVDs or CDs. Everyone is interested in getting people to interact as much as possible, wherever possible, with the brand.”

That makes these shows an excellent solution for two major problems facing broadcasters in most major territories: the growing penetration of DVRs, which allow viewers to skip through commercials, and the migration of younger viewers away from television to newer media.

“All the broadcasters are looking for the big program that pulls the whole family together and creates a viewing event that encourages people to watch live television,” says Heather Stevenson, the president of Zodiak Television World, which sells Stars on Stage. “There is certainly a growing desire for audiences to interact with programs, and these formats let them do it with SMS or online features.”

Such shows also make sense financially, notes Chris Bonney, the CEO of Screentime Partners, which sells and produces such formats as Ranking the Stars. “Compared to the cost of producing a drama, these shows are very cost-effective weekend prime-time programming.” In the U.K., for example, a big prime-time studio format might cost �250,000 ($475,000), much less than the �500,000 ($950,000) to �700,000 ($1.3 million) spent on an original drama.

Producers are also offering a wide array of potential formats, many of which don’t neatly fit into the traditional definition of variety or game shows.

Some, such as Idols, are often referred to as star-search shows or music-competition shows. These typically blend both reality and studio entertainment. Others, such as Dancing with the Stars, are often referred to as celebrity variety or celebrity competitions. They also mix studio entertainment with the behind-the-scenes footage of a reality show.

Broadcasters currently are most interested in game shows and the hybrids, such as celebrity-competition and music-competition shows, in prime time, argues Morley at Endemol. “There isn’t a huge demand for pure variety,” he contends.

The more traditional forms of reality had remained popular in some markets, notably France, Spain and Italy, throughout the 1990s, but had virtually died out in others, such as the U.S., notes Distraction’s Rodrigue. “Until Idols came along, variety was dead,” he says.

Before Idols, however, Distraction’s Star for a Night aired very successfully between 2000 and 2004 in such markets as the U.K., France, Italy, Poland and Denmark, where the last season pulled in a 60-percent audience share.

Star for a Night, however, was quickly overshadowed by FremantleMedia and 19TV’s format Idols. After launching on ITV in the U.K. in 2001 as Pop Idol, the finale in February of 2002 pulled in nearly 14 million viewers, a 57-percent audience share. The show has subsequently been commissioned and produced in more than 30 countries, where it has attracted over 110 million viewers who cast over 1.7 billion votes.

One remarkable feature of Idols has been its staying power. “It has done amazingly well year after year,” notes Clark. “In all the major territories, the show has been recommissioned, and in most cases the ratings have grown each year.”

The success of Idols paved the way for a number of other star-search programs, such as Endemol’s Star Academy and Operaci�n Triunfo, which have enjoyed considerable success.

Audience interest in the live studio entertainment featured in Idols also seems to have convinced some broadcasters to try more unusual formats, such as Dancing with the Stars. The show was a huge hit on the BBC in its first season as Strictly Come Dancing and then was successfully sold to Australia, where it pulled in 2.1 million viewers on Seven Network, and Italy, where it got a 30-percent audience share on RAI Uno.

Even with that success, “people thought we were crazy when we bought Dancing with the Stars,” admits Stephen McPherson, the president of ABC Entertainment. “But we could see how different it was and we really believed it would work.”

ABC executives were so enthralled with the British version that they also took another big risk—they decided to have the BBC produce the show. While the BBC had extensive experience producing live entertainment, the idea that an American commercial broadcaster would give a foreign broadcaster so much control over an expensive prime-time show was perhaps as novel as the format. It would also be the first time that the BBC produced a U.S. network show.

The BBC sent over a team of executives to produce the show and the gamble paid off. The first season in the U.S. became a surprise hit, with the finale pulling in 22 million viewers. And the second season did even better, with 27 million viewers watching the finale.

Similar success has followed in many of the 28 markets where the show has been sold. In Denmark, the show pulled in a 78-percent audience share and the Finnish version got a 61-percent audience share. Its debut in Germany attracted 7 million viewers, and in Poland the first episode got a 29-percent audience share.

“People didn’t believe it would ever work, yet it’s been commissioned all over the world and has been a huge hit wherever it’s played,” says the BBC’s Garvie.

THE FORMAT GAME

In recent years, game shows have also been making a comeback. Endemol’s Deal or No Deal, for example, has aired in over 35 countries, and its success has triggered increased demand for a number of the company’s other formats, including 1 vs. 100, Show Me What You’ve Got and For the Rest of your Life. “This is just the first part of the game-show wave,” Morley adds.

FremantleMedia’s Clark agrees. “We are seeing a resurgence of games and studio-based games,” he notes, pointing to the success of such formats as America’s Got Talent and Poker Face.

This has also been good for older shows. “The Price Is Right and Family Feud are back on the air in a number of territories and there is a lot of interest in these shows again,” he says.

That’s also helping King World, which sells the international rights to such perennially popular formats as Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, which typically air in afternoon or early-evening time slots.

“There has been a resurgence of interest in game shows around the world,” says Barry Chamberlain, the senior VP of sales who oversees formats at CBS Paramount International Television. “Markets where our shows have been off the air are now coming to us to license the shows. Wheel has gotten quite a boost in markets like France and Spain.”

In France, TF1 just began showing Wheel, which had been off the air in the country for about ten years. Early ratings show that it is number one in its time slot and is pulling in a 43.5-percent share of housewives under 50, the program’s target audience.

Wheel has also begun airing this year in Spain on Antena 3, where it has been averaging 1.3 million viewers per telecast with a 27.3-percent audience share, ranking number one in its time period among total viewers and adults 25 to 44.

In other markets, King World has been putting its formats in game-show marathons that feature several different types of games during a prime-time extravaganza. “It is a good way for them to get exposure and to show the broadcaster they can work,” Chamberlain says.

The demand for game shows is also helping some of the company’s newer formats. For example, King World’s Wipeout game show bowed in January of this year in Spain on Cuatro as Alta tensi�n.

For both broadcasters and format distributors, new media has become a key part of the new generation of studio-based formats, both as a way to attract audiences and as a revenue generator.

William Linders, the executive director of digital media at Endemol International, says that his company frequently makes content for mobile phones and that interactive new media elements are a key part of all its newer formats.

Such moves are often designed to keep viewers involved in a show following its live performance. In France, for example, FremantleMedia put all the content from the auditions for Nouvelle Star (the local version of Idols) online and allowed viewers to download the footage, says Claire Tavernier, the senior VP of interactive and senior VP of licensing for the U.K. and Germany at FremantleMedia Licensing Worldwide. “It was expensive but attracted a lot of people to the website.”

The websites for versions of Idols in Australia and the U.S. have also been popular with viewers. They featured some original content and applications. Users could, for example, click on pictures of some of the contestants and dress them. Then they could buy similar items of clothing online.

STUDIO SAVVY

Still, the key to success with big live studio shows remains old-fashioned production expertise, most say. “They are difficult to produce well,” admits FremantleMedia’s Clark. “Unlike reality, you don’t have the luxury of shooting hours and hours of footage and then fixing all your problems in the editing suite. You have to get it right that day.”

Those production skills have been a particularly strong selling point for FremantleMedia, Clark adds. “We’ve always excelled in studio entertainment, going back to the early days of Grundy, Goodson and Thames Television [production units that are now part of FremantleMedia.] Even when there wasn’t a demand for these shows, we had people around who were experts in producing them, and now that the tide has turned, we have the staff to help train a new generation.”

For companies who don’t have large local production companies, the difficulties of creating live entertainment make it important to work with good local partners, says Mutimer at Granada. For the Italian production of Dancing on Ice, for example, Granada worked with an Italian production company “that has years of experience in variety programming and in placing celebrities,” he says. “They came up with a list of appropriate celebrities. They knew the local figure skaters. Touches like that can make a show resonate with local audiences.”

Typically, the big formats are produced by terrestrial broadcasters, but some cable and satellite services are also getting into the game. SET (Sony Entertainment Television) India has produced a version of Idols in India, and its sister service in Latin America has followed suit, says Marie Jacobson, the senior VP of programming and production for international networks at Sony Pictures Television International. “The budgets were significant for both India and Latin America,” she admits, and it was a challenge to make it work financially. “We were looking for something that would really make us stand out, and the shows have done that,” with both audiences and advertisers. In Latin America, for example, Hewlett-Packard teamed up with Sony to sponsor a contest that will send winners to view the show’s finale in October.

In addition to adapting third-party formats, SPTI’s own catalogue includes the business-themed Dragon’s Den, sold to the BBC and CBC, among others.

Some shows can even have a life after the live airing as a taped version. David Ellender, the CEO of FremantleMedia Enterprises, notes that his company has more than 30 deals for the taped version of American Idol, mostly with terrestrial broadcasters. Typically, the shows air 48 hours after the U.S. broadcast.

But American Idol is not the only such production currently sold by FremantleMedia as a taped show. “The X Factor has been sold in seven or eight international markets and is still being pitched and rolled out as a format, so we are not trying to sell the taped version,” Ellender says. “The goal is to establish it as a local production first.”

Clearing the rights to the music is also an issue. “Given the cost of clearing the rights, we can really only afford to have one taped show [of a format] in distribution at any one time,” Ellender says. For Idols, that is the American version.

THE NEXT BIG THING

Another illustration of the growing demand for big studio-based game and entertainment formats can be found on the creative side. “You’re going to see a lot of new shows coming from major companies and smaller companies at MIPCOM,” says FremantleMedia’s Clark.

At MIPCOM, FremantleMedia will be pushing such studio-based formats as The X Factor, Got Talent, known as America’s Got Talent in the U.S., Poker Face and Thank God You’re Here. The last, which was a hit in Australia and is now being produced in Germany, is an example of how studio-based formats are already evolving in new directions. The show features comedy sketches in which a celebrity guest performer is dressed up in a costume, say a Roman toga, and steps through a door into an unfamiliar setting. The comedians greet the celebrity with, “Thank God you’re here,” and then the celebrity must improvise his or her way through the situation.

Morley says that Endemol will also be offering a wide array of studio-based formats and game shows, including Deal or No Deal, 1 vs. 100, Show Me What You’ve Got, For the Rest of Your Life, and Circus of Celebrities.

“It is a new form of celebrity reality and a new form of variety entertainment,” Morley says of Circus of Celebrities. “You used to have celebrities on variety shows singing, telling gags or juggling. Here they will have to juggle, tame animals and do other things you might expect in a circus.” The show is currently being produced in Portugal.

At the moment, the largest format companies, such as FremantleMedia and Endemol, dominate the sale and production of big, live, studio-entertainment formats because they are so expensive to make, says Distraction’s Rodrigue.

But he adds that this has also been good for smaller players. “The big talent shows cost a lot to produce and broadcasters have to balance their schedule with some cheaper programs like game shows,” he explains. To capitalize on that demand, Distraction has been adding new game-show formats to its library.

At MIPCOM, Zodiak will be focusing on its Stars on Stage format, which pairs a celebrity with a well-known singing talent to sing duets and compete against other duos. The show has already been sold in Germany, Sweden and Ukraine. Demand for such shows, Stevenson says, is particularly hot in Europe. She expects to announce the acquisition of other formats by MIPCOM. “These shows are costly,” Stevenson admits, “but the positives outweigh the negatives. It’s an area of focus for us because audiences really want big, fun entertainment spectacles.”