MIPTV Panel: New Creative Boom in the U.S.

NEW YORK: At this year’s MIPFormats, World Screen’s Anna Carugati moderated a session profiling two hit formats that originated in the U.S.: A+E Networks’s 60 Days In and Viacom International Media Networks’s Lip Sync Battle.

The session, New Creative Boom in the U.S., discussed what’s driving the success of these two shows that were commissioned by U.S. broadcasters and are now being rolled out as formats worldwide. First up was the new A&E hit 60 Days In, with A+E Networks’s Hayley Babcock, head of formats, international programming and production; Brad Holcman, senior director, nonfiction and alternative programming at A&E; and Ellen Lovejoy, A+E Networks’s VP of international content sales. In the show, seven individuals volunteer to spend 60 days undercover at Clark County Jail in order to shed a light on corruption at the facility.

The second half of the panel was devoted to a very different format: Lip Sync Battle. The show, which was first commissioned by Spike in the U.S., has traveled widely courtesy of Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN). On hand to talk about the concept were Caroline Beaton, VIMN’s senior VP of international program sales, and Malcolm Gerrie, chief executive of Whizz Kid Entertainment and executive producer of the British version, which airs on Channel 5.