TVFORMATS
In January, BBC Studios made a set of executive appointments to strengthen and expand its Los Angeles unscripted leadership team, a production base responsible for hits such as Dancing with the Stars, Weakest Link, The 1% Club and, most recently, the survival competition series Outlast on Netflix, which they produce with Jason Bateman’s Aggregate Films. Ryan O’Dowd was promoted to president of unscripted. Jenny Groom, who previously led all unscripted competition formats at NBCUniversal, joined as executive VP of unscripted development. Krystal Whitney was elevated to executive VP of current programming for unscripted. The executives talk to TV Formats Weekly about how the U.S. team is collaborating with producers in the U.K. on developing and launching global formats and how they have successfully produced shows in the U.S. in nearly every unscripted genre.
TV FORMATS: How is BBC Studios strengthening its ability to produce format adaptations in the U.S. and ramp up the creation of entertainment originals out of L.A.?
O’DOWD: We take great pride in the award-winning and critically acclaimed content produced by our Los Angeles team, as an integral part of BBC Studios’ Global Entertainment network. In L.A., we’ve proven to be successful at producing both original IP and format adaptations in nearly every unscripted genre. These span from studio game shows (Weakest Link with NBC, The 1% Club with FOX), live competition (Dancing with the Stars for ABC and Disney+, coming off of a breakout successful season of appointment viewing in which we also became a hit on TikTok in a time when a strong social media presence is more powerful than ever), competition survival series (Outlast with Netflix), Alaska doc series (Life Below Zero, Life Below Zero: Port Protection Alaska, Life Below Zero: Next Generation, Life Below Zero: First Alaskans, all for National Geographic), ensemble doc series (Wrestlers for Netflix), true-crime limited documentary series (Murder Among the Mormons for Netflix), studio dating (Ex-Rated with Andy Cohen for Peacock) and more to come.
BBC Studios Global Entertainment recently announced a partnership with Jolly Octopus Media, founded by Ollie Brack and James Longman, incredibly talented producers who will be a welcome addition to our L.A. network, focused on developing global entertainment formats—proof of our wider commitment to bringing in creative talent and expanding our pool of innovative ideas. I’m thrilled to have recently brought Jenny Groom on to lead our development out of L.A. and to draw on her decades of experience launching some of the biggest formats on broadcast and streaming during her tenure at NBCUniversal. Krystal Whitney, who leads our current programming, has worked side by side with me for nearly five years to launch major new productions and has been integral to expanding our business. All of this is to say that we’re deeply committed to the growth of our L.A. unscripted business and excited about what’s on the horizon for us in this next chapter.
TV FORMATS: How is the U.S. team collaborating with producers in the U.K. on developing and launching global formats?
O’DOWD: We have a robust pipeline of proven IP coming to us from our U.K. indies and our broader production teams in the U.K. that we remake and build into major hits for the U.S. market, such as Weakest Link and Dancing with the Stars. We work closely with U.K. producers to collaborate on their formats with the goal of preserving a show’s core DNA while also making it marketable for the U.S. We “Americanize” a format, which can entail everything from supersizing the scale of the show to reshaping the tone or pacing to suit our U.S. audiences to attaching the perfect talent for our market such as our Emmy-nominated outstanding game-show host Jane Lynch for Weakest Link and the incredibly talented and charismatic Joel McHale for The 1% Club, set to return for its second season on FOX.
We work very closely with the likes of Magnum Media (The 1% Club) and Mettlemouse Entertainment (which is delivering The Honesty Box series to Channel 4 in the U.K. right now, which we think has the potential to be a global format success). The U.K. team has also brought in Nation’s Dumbest from Montreux Film, which is the top-rated show in Norway, and Silence is Golden from Yes Yes Media, Richard Bacon’s production company, and everybody in the company is excited to see where these will go.
Our BBC Studios team in L.A. is also working with Karl Warner, our new executive VP of U.K. entertainment and digital development in Global Entertainment, to strengthen the pipeline of formats from the U.K. to the U.S. We’ve had some really exciting conversations with Karl and can’t wait to see that pipeline come to fruition.
Across BBC Studios’ Global Entertainment network, we consistently tap into each other’s creativity and collaborate with our international colleagues—whether this is through international co-developments or our Creative Exchanges, which allow us to share insights and innovations, ensuring our formats come with the stamp of quality expected of the BBC.
TV FORMATS: It has been a transformative time in the unscripted entertainment landscape. What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing the segment in the year ahead?
O’DOWD: The challenges in the year ahead should ultimately present opportunities. It’s about figuring out how to create those opportunities. In the current market, producers are consistently being asked to deliver the scope and scale of traditional U.S. entertainment formats at a budget that provides value to the broadcast network or streamer.
Today, it’s more important than ever to understand the direct impact of the budget thresholds. How much did the show cost, what rating and viewership will a format in this genre likely garner, and was that enough to create value for the network on advertising revenue or new subscribers?
We’re constantly looking at the ways by which we can deliver top-notch productions at competitive budgets. Ultimately, it’s always going to be about the quality of the idea. As a true global company with production infrastructure set up in many territories around the world, BBC Studios is fortunate to be uniquely well-equipped to deploy our vast network of resources to deliver in this climate.
It’s also about being open to new business models and unconventional ways by which we can get deals over the line. That can be in the form of creating production hubs for multiple channels from multiple territories that benefit from a singular set build with shared costs. It can also be in the form of sponsorships and integrations and opportunities like the nationwide tour we put on for Dancing with the Stars or the apps we’ve created for Weakest Link and The 1% Club that generate additional revenue streams.
We’ve just been at the center of a deal on our 1% Club show in which Amazon’s Prime Video had the streaming rights, and FOX had the broadcast rights, with each new episode being released on the same night on each respective platform. Nobody could have imagined those types of deals being brokered years ago, but we’re all in this together, and the ability to be creative and nimble has been incredibly beneficial. I’m seeing cable networks, broadcasters and streamers open to forgoing traditional approaches and exploring new ways by which we can all bring high-quality programs to audiences.
TV FORMATS: Tell me about your previous experience working in the unscripted entertainment space that you bring to the team.
GROOM: I spent 20 years of my career at NBCUniversal and Peacock on the buying side. While leading the unscripted formats team at NBCU, I commissioned major global hits like The Traitors and Love Island. With my experience, I bring a high-level, strategic buyer’s mindset to our development so that we can continue to focus our energy on the big wins. My buying experience enables me to bring a unique perspective to gauge which projects and formats are the most marketable and have the strongest potential to become long-lasting global hits.
