2019: The Year in Formats

World Screen looks back at the major trends in formats in 2019.

All eyes will be on Banijay Group as it completes its acquisition of Endemol Shine Group in the coming months. Announced in October, the transaction (rumored to be worth about $2.2 billion) brings together two content giants—and two of the biggest names in the format business. The merged entity will own almost 200 production companies in 23 territories and the rights for close to 100,000 hours of content. Big Brother and MasterChef will now join other megabrands, among them Survivor and Temptation Island, in the new Banijay Group library.  (ITV Studios also grew last year, with the acquisition of Armoza Formats. It also saw John de Mol exit Talpa Media, four years after taking control of the format icon’s Dutch outfit.)

Speaking of megaformats, they had another banner year, with beloved favorites still finding room on broadcaster schedules. ITV secured a new five-year deal with Syco Entertainment and Thames for Simon Cowell’s shows to appear exclusively on the channel until at least 2024, including Britain’s Got Talent. Big Brother returned in several territories. MasterChef, The Voice and Dancing with the Stars continued their global rollouts. Classics like Family Feud found new homes, as did The Weakest Link, Temptation Island, Cash Cab and Deal or No Deal.

And yet, the most-talked-about format of the year was The Masked Singer, which rose from relative obscurity to become the biggest shiny-floor studio show to hit the market since The Voice. Originating in Korea, the bizarre celebrities-in-masks singing competition was a huge hit on FOX and went on to secure deals in a raft of territories, including Germany (ProSieben), the U.K. (ITV), Australia (Network Ten) and Mexico (Televisa). Park Won Woo, who created the original concept for The King of Mask Singer, signed a first-look producing deal with Universal Television Alternative Studio; and Studio Lambert sealed a development deal with Izzie Pick Ibarra, showrunner and executive producer of The Masked Singer on FOX.

The social-media traction around The Masked Singer in the U.S. reinforced the idea that even in an on-demand era, broadcasters can create events around big unscripted brands. Of note, ABC has slated a multi-night prime-time event, Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time, and ITV commissioned Quizmaster, a 90-minute special that pits previous high-profile contestants of other major TV game shows against each other.

Game shows, naturally, remained in demand worldwide, as did the perennial favorites of dating shows, shiny-floor talent and cooking. Some kids’ formats found traction in 2019, with The Viral Factory headed to Thailand, Wild Kids set for TV4 and C More, The Treehouse Stories being adapted for China and Nickelodeon in the U.S. greenlighting The Crystal Maze.

Meanwhile, scripted-format deals abounded in 2019, absolutely everywhere. The Bridge landed new deals in South Africa and Serbia/Croatia. Designated Survivor was remade in Korea. Descendants of the Sun was reversioned in the Philippines. In the U.S., deals were secured on the hit Israeli series Queens, Charlie Golf One and La Famiglia, as well as the Swedish drama Honour and the German procedural Einstein. In Turkey, Kanal D launched a local version of House, Limon Yapim secured the Filipino drama A Mother’s Guilt and producer MF Yapim picked up Nippon TV’s Abandoned. Nippon TV also reached a French deal on Mother and Woman–My Life for My Children–.

India demonstrated a huge appetite for drama formats, with deals on Fauda, Doctor Foster, Ray Donovan, Liar, Luther and more, primarily to feed the needs of the country’s booming OTT sector. Indeed, OTT platforms across the globe stepped up their format-acquisition activities last year. The pan-Asian Viu platform announced versions of Black from Korea and Pretty Little Liars from the U.S. Production began in China on the Mandarin-language version of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries for Tencent. all3media international secured the first scripted format adaptation of the Australian comedy-drama Diary of an Uber Driver, with Germany’s Joyn. Amazon Prime signed up for Love Island in France, Celebrity Hunted in Italy and LOL: Last One Laughing for Australia. Netflix ordered the zombie series Reality Z, based on the British show Dead Set.

Keep up with all the developments in the formats business by subscribing to TV Formats Weekly and TV Formats Breaking News and by visiting TVFormats.ws.