TVFORMATS
Media Ranch is presenting a full formats slate at MIPCOM that includes Judge for One Day, which has just been commissioned by RTL Belgium.
The format Judge for One Day shows what happens when eight ordinary people are given the opportunity to act as criminal judges for a day. Participants watch the exact same reconstruction of crimes, but vary wildly in their sentences. The series is a Danish Radio (DR) format which previously aired on DR 2. Media Ranch’s slate includes the entire DR format catalog.
Also available at MIPCOM is Watch!, a shiny-floor competition series billed as an entertainment game show. The program mixes emotional and exhilarating performances with a high-stakes game show requiring memory skills. “It is a spectacular entertainment and memory-skills show that brings the family together,” said Sophie Ferron, Media Ranch’s president, founder and executive producer. Three deals were just announced two weeks ago with Talpa Germany, WeMake from France and Matchbox Pictures, an NBCUniversal International Studios company from Australia.
Social-experiment formats are on offer as well: Get Lost sees three youngsters who have been living at home lovingly forced to leave their nests and move into an apartment together. 180 Days asks what happens when you walk in someone else’s shoes, especially when that person lives in a different environment and has a different background. In season one, five university students attempt to find out what getting old is truly like by living side by side with senior citizens in a nursing home for six months.
Other highlights for MIPCOM are: 1 Day, 2 Teams, 3 Animals, an environmental/nature format where two teams get 24 hours to find three endangered animals before it’s too late; the entrepreneurial competition My Next Empire, in which contestants get the chance to win nearly $1.5 million for their business concept; and Big Love, which sees three couples, all of whom have gained major weight since they fell for each other, agree to be part of an experiment.
Ferron stated: “Media Ranch is coming to MIPCOM in full force, having inked the deal for Judge for One Day in Belgium, which goes straight into production this fall, along with our recently-announced deals for the hot new format Watch!—an exhilarating, multi-action family program that tests everyone’s memory. We are thrilled to bring our premium catalog of formats, including the entire DR portfolio, which we acquired this spring and which has been very successful already! Additionally, and importantly, we are actively looking to meet new format producers as we want to continue collaborating with the world’s brightest, maintaining Media Ranch’s stellar reputation for producing and distributing first-class programs!”
She added, “We want top format creators and producers from all over the world to come meet with us to discuss format co-development.”
