Viewpoint: Learning to Play Nice

After a two-year hiatus, American Idol has made its triumphant return. Ryan Seacrest is back, with a new judging panel. The format is intact, but there is one thing missing from the entertainment megahit: the bad auditions.

The show originally ran for 15 seasons on FOX. The early days of the original U.S. series featured a handful of out-of-tune singers and talentless performers in its audition rounds (who could forget the infamously awful rendition of “She Bangs” delivered by William Hung?), and viewers laughed along as the judges rolled their eyes and delivered cutting remarks. On the new ABC version, the producers have now done away with dedicating any airtime to contestants who are wholly unqualified for the show, removing mocking (or meanness) and upping the heartfelt emotion.

This trend can be seen throughout the format business as well. In surveying buyers and distributors about what’s in demand in the current entertainment landscape, words like “feel good,” “lighthearted” and “fun” popped up quite frequently. In these uncertain times, viewers are often looking to television as a means of escapism, and producers have taken note.

In the MIPTV edition of TV Formats we examine the current crop of dating and marriage shows on the market, as audiences flock to aspirational stories of fairy-tale romance and the hopefulness of finding love. We also explore the present demand for scripted formats, which are seeing a nice boost in popularity as the appetite for drama seems to be insatiable. The proliferation of on-demand platforms—from global players to those more niche—is certainly one of the biggest factors contributing to the uptick in the amount of scripted programming on the market. But will SVODs and OTTs have the same impact on the unscripted entertainment space? This is a question that many format creators and distributors will be mulling over at MIPTV this year. Avi Nir, the CEO of Keshet Media Group, weighs in on this very topic in our Q&A with him, while Stephen Lambert, founder of Studio Lambert, shares with us his thoughts on the overall commissioning climate for producers in the U.K. and the U.S. today.