Fremantle’s Vasha Wallace

A look at the recent format offerings from Fremantle shows just how wide the gamut is for what can cut through in today’s market. From the heartwarming stories in The Piano to the laugh-out-loud physical antics of Ants to the psychological gameplay of House of Secrets and known IP in Scrabble, the current slate is a varied one. Vasha Wallace, executive VP of global acquisitions and development at Fremantle, talks to TV Formats about the approach for tapping into the company’s global creative network and sharing learnings and best practices across the group.

TV FORMATS: Where did The Piano originate, and what made you feel it was a fit for the Fremantle catalog?
WALLACE: It came from Love Productions, which mentioned it to me before the pandemic, way back in 2019. They were having conversations with Channel 4 about it, and I thought it sounded really interesting. It was probably a bit more of a documentary at that point. It was more about filming people playing pianos in train stations around the U.K. Love Productions then had the idea of having these two judges who people didn’t know were there. Then it started becoming more formatted. The more they talked to me about the concept of the show, the more interested I became in it.

It’s such a wonderful format. It’s done incredibly well for us format-wise around the world. In the U.K., the ratings were absolutely phenomenal, with multiple seasons now, including Christmas specials. It’s a special, unique show. It’s very much in its own lane in terms of a format. One of the reasons is because the people in the show are not typical talent contestants. They’re not doing the show because they want to be famous; they’re doing the show because they just want to play the piano. The piano has quite a special role in the format. When you look at all of the different versions that we’ve made—in Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark and now Australia—what’s really special is that it tells the stories of the people in that country. For example, the Australian version has amazing stories from Indigenous Australians. There are wonderful stories from people who grew up on farms, hundreds or thousands of miles away from other people, and they’ll come and tell their stories through the piano. All the while, you’ve got these two fantastic stars from the music world and the piano world looking for someone to put in a concert. It’s got multiple layers and a real heart to it. It tells the stories of people really beautifully.

TV FORMATS: What are some of the ways international versions have iterated on the format?
WALLACE: All of them are pretty close to the U.K. version. It’s the idea of having these pianos and people coming to them, they play their song, they talk to our presenter, and then we have our two iconic judges hidden somewhere in a backroom waiting, looking for talent at the end of the day. The one that’s slightly different is the Spanish version. Rather than building toward one finale concert, at the end of each episode, one person is given a piano, which is amazing. Then, at the end of the series, two people are invited to play in the concerts of the talent. One of the judges is the singer Mika, who is also in the U.K. version. The other one is Spanish singer Pablo López. They invited them to play in their concerts. It was really helpful having Mika because he is also a judge in the U.K. version, so he knew exactly what was going to happen and what was expected. He was very helpful on the production.

TV FORMATS: What about this type of heartfelt reality makes it of the moment?
WALLACE: It is incredibly emotional and authentic. That authenticity is something that you get in every single episode. There are real people telling their stories through the piano, and that authenticity comes through in those stories. Chris [O’Dell, head of global entertainment production at Fremantle] described it as the beginning of the journey and the end of the journey. They want to come out and play it, but they’re not necessarily building up to a big something that they want to do in their career. They just want to play the piano for the people there. It’s all about the authenticity.

TV FORMATS: What’s guiding your acquisition strategy for the formats catalog at Fremantle at present?
WALLACE: We’re being asked for fresh shows. We’re asked for new, original, noisy IP. If you look at our recent slate from the London TV Screenings, we had Scrabble, House of Secrets, Ants and Swiped. They all resonated in different ways, and that’s why we’ve made them part of our slate.

Scrabble is a really fantastic game show based on an iconic board game that the world knows and loves. It launched on The CW in the U.S. and got impressive ratings. It has a winning formula of what we know broadcasters worldwide are looking for. It’s proven IP, and in times when broadcasters’ marketing budgets are under pressure, this cuts through. You are immediately providing brand recognition for your audiences, so it’s got strong audience recognition, and also, it’s got a really cost-effective production model.  

House of Secrets, from Sphere Media in Canada, is launching next month [on Crave]. I’ve been describing it as a psychological thriller reality competition. These people arrive at this slightly scary house in the woods, and they’ve all got a secret. The aim of the game is to keep your secret. There are lots of twists and turns. One player gets dropped from the show through a trap door at the end of every episode, so it’s just got this noisy way of working with the contestants, and it’s fantastic storytelling. We’ve had a lot of interest in that.

Swiped launched in the U.K. on Channel 4. It’s from Boldprint Studios, which is one of our minority investment companies. It’s a social experiment that takes a classroom of children (who are all around 12 years old in the U.K. version) and asks them to give up their phones for 21 days. They put them all in a big glass box. It’s shot very much like a documentary. They’re working with rigorous scientific testing. They test all of the kids at the beginning and at the end, and they look at what happens to their brains over time when they don’t have their phones. When they do have their phones, they work with a doctor and psychologist. Some of the teachers also decide to give up their phones. It’s very emotional because they talk to parents who have lost children because of things that have gone wrong on social media. One girl was suffering horrendous anxiety because she was being bullied on social media. It makes you realize how dangerous it is to give young children phones. It’s a really powerful show to be associated with and to be able to talk about with everyone.

Ants, meanwhile, is laugh-out-loud and unique. In these times, we need comedy, and this is absolutely hilarious. We partnered with Nippon TV in Japan, where they’ve piloted it. Humans get dressed up in ant suits, including the camera operators. It’s about the whole notion of working together as a collective, the way that ants do. It’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids as a big physical game show. They are in a big, super-sized kitchen environment, all dressed as ants, and they have to get over an obstacle course. Every time we show it to people or describe it, we get the most amazing laugh-out-loud moments—people absolutely love it. We’ve got a lot of interest in that one.

TV FORMATS: Talk to us about working across Fremantle’s international footprint to scout format concepts ripe for development.
WALLACE: I work with all of our production companies around the world. Fremantle has an extensive global production network, with over 30 offices across Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australia and the U.K. I spend a lot of my time talking to colleagues, and it’s a two-way conversation. I’m talking to them about what’s going on in the global landscape, and they’re telling me about what’s happening in their markets: what they’re looking for, what’s working, what’s not working, where there are opportunities. I spend a lot of time helping to join the dots and find shows for those opportunities through collaborations, co-developments, co-productions and acquisitions. I also facilitate weekly calls with all of our key territories so that they can talk to each other, and there’s sharing. They’re all talking to each other, and there is a real, genuine cross-fertilization that happens.

We also have regular development workshops and get-togethers over specific genres. So, for example, we had one recently where one of my European colleagues said, I’ve got a need for a certain type of show, can you guys come and help me? We had a workshop where some of the best creative brains in the company came together and spent three days in meeting rooms, brainstorming, working together, looking at data and looking at opportunities. We came out of that with not just one but a whole raft of really strong ideas, which everyone’s been pitching.

I talk to all of the big broadcast and streamer groups. I went to Sweden to take part in a Nordic pitch, and we also have a Euro pitch. It’s an opportunity for us to talk to them, but also an opportunity for them to talk to us. I make sure I feed all of that back to my colleagues around the world. Those sessions are invaluable, and they work really well. It’s interesting when you talk to all of the global broadcasting groups and how much they want to know about our internal creative network. They want to know what the feedback is from other countries, what the landscape looks like, and we’re able to feed that back to them as well.  

TV FORMATS: How are streamers impacting your format business?
WALLACE: There are big English-language global streamers, like Prime Video and Netflix, and then in all of our territories, there are local streamers as well, and they’re very strong. They’re  important clients for us. The global streamers started out focused on big English-language opportunities, but as they’ve grown. As they become more genuinely global, they’re behaving much more locally, which is great for us because they want local programming. They want local stories because that’s how you grow your subscriber base: by telling local stories in a local language. So, it’s a relationship that’s important to us. Too Hot to Handle started off as a big English-language show, with Americans, Australians, Canadians and Brits. Now, we’ve made versions in Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Poland and South Africa. So, Netflix is commissioning us to make versions in different territories, which is great. We’ve been able to work with them on adapting it and working out the best way to make it in different countries. We’ve got a show called Love Never Lies, which our Spanish team created, that is airing on Netflix. We’re now making new versions of that, including in Poland. 

TV FORMATS: What are the other key shifts that you’ve had to contend with to keep Fremantle’s format business in pole position?
WALLACE: Everyone from the big broadcasting groups to local broadcasters wants us, as a big production network, to supply production opportunities, cost efficiencies and solutions. What are the production solutions? Every time we pitch them a show, we have to think that they’re going to ask us how we can make this the most cost-effective show that we can, that provides value for money and will be a fantastic show for their audience. We’re often talking about hubs. For example, for Ants, we’ve been having a lot of hub conversations because it is a show that has an amazing set that lends itself naturally to a hub. Not all shows lend themselves to hubs, so you also have to manage expectations on that because people will be like, “Oh, we’re going to do a hub,” and actually, sometimes it just makes sense to make a local show for your territory. You don’t need to be bussing or flying people in; you can just make a great show in your country. So, it might be something like a hub, or it could be doing back-to-back productions.

What I have seen is that format sales worldwide have slowed down in the last few years—in part due to Covid, the advertising slowdown and streaming contraction. What’s interesting, though, is that even though overall format adaptations have fallen in recent years, the number of new quiz and game adaptations was actually higher than five years ago. Quiz and game formats are proving resilient. We’ve seen that, for example, with Password, which we’ve launched and are relaunching, with Family Feud, The Price Is Right and now Scrabble. Game shows are incredibly difficult to get right, but when you get them right and they do well, they’re cost-effective, advertisers like them, audiences like them, and you can keep playing them and reinventing them in different ways with fresh hosts and making them feel relevant for audiences.

Our global network benefits from shared creativity, problem-solving, learning from our successes and mistakes and then sharing that knowledge with all of our colleagues around the world. When we’re looking at shows, we’re constantly coming up with ways to improve them, fine-tune them and make them more efficient for our broadcasters, and we share all of that knowledge with our colleagues.