{"id":5876,"date":"2017-10-19T16:00:46","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T20:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/tvformats\/"},"modified":"2017-11-06T10:01:03","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T15:01:03","slug":"foxs-rob-wade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/foxs-rob-wade\/","title":{"rendered":"FOX’s Rob Wade"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Rob Wade knows a lot about managing iconic non-scripted brands. Over the course of his 20-year career in music, variety, reality and live entertainment, he has worked on some of the world\u2019s most successful formats, including Dancing with the Stars<\/em>, The X Factor<\/em>, America\u2019s Got Talent<\/em> and I\u2019m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!<\/em>, among many others. Earlier this year, FOX tapped Wade as its new president of alternative entertainment and specials. In his role he inherited several successful long-running brands, including Hell\u2019s Kitchen<\/em> and MasterChef<\/em>, but he is also eager to refresh the schedule with the best that the U.S. and international markets have to offer. As he tells TV Formats<\/em>, Wade is feeling bullish about the global format landscape, expressing confidence that the elusive next big thing is just around the corner.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> Tell us about your acquisition of The Final Four<\/em> format. What did you see in that idea that made you think it would work well for FOX?
\nWADE:<\/strong> It\u2019s a super clean format and it is incredibly engaging. What I love about it is that it starts where other music competitions usually end. You have a set of four very good, talented performers, and then people come in and audition in an attempt to dethrone them. That moment\u2014at which they get the opportunity to not only have a sing-off with one of the four but also choose who that is\u2014was very compelling. I\u2019ve been doing these [talent] shows for a long time and watching them for a long time, and it felt like a genuinely fresh approach to the genre. Before FOX, I was developing shows, first at Syco, Simon Cowell\u2019s company, and then at the BBC. I came up with a lot of shows myself and developed them. I\u2019ve seen a lot of shows like this pitched. [The Final Four<\/em> is] just unique. It immediately spoke to me. It\u2019s funny, a journalist the other day asked me, Did you come in and just aim for a singing show? Genuinely, I didn\u2019t come in thinking, I want a singing show. I\u2019ve been looking at lots of buckets: singing, variety, game shows, social experiments, etc. But this was the first show that came to me that I just went, yeah, this is a great show. It could have been anything, but it happened to be a singing show.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> What excited you most about joining FOX?
\nWADE:<\/strong> I\u2019d been here for The X Factor<\/em> and I\u2019d worked with the team before. I found it to be an incredibly invigorating culture. It\u2019s a place where you can take risks. It\u2019s got a real pioneer spirit to it. The new additions to FOX since my time were Dana [Walden] and Gary [Newman, the chairmen and CEOs of Fox Television Group], and you look at their track record, they\u2019re just phenomenal producers and incredibly talented executives. That got me excited. The other reason was, I\u2019ve been showrunning and been on that side of the table for a long time. For me, this was an opportunity to try something different. There hasn\u2019t been an unscripted hit for a while. I feel like now is the time. I\u2019m quite optimistic about the business and that we\u2019re on the verge of having another hit, and I hope it\u2019s going to be here at FOX. There\u2019s a new, younger generation of producers coming through who are very exciting, very creative, and I think technology has moved on now, which is always a great entry point into new projects. I can feel a perfect storm coming, where this is the time. And I just enjoy doing this! [Laughs<\/em>]\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> Having worked on The X Factor<\/em> and Dancing with the Stars<\/em>, among others, you have lots of experience keeping brands fresh. Tell us about your approach to managing returning shows and maintaining their viewership.
\nWADE:<\/strong> The bottom line is, it\u2019s hard work. And you have to be innovative, you have to be creative, you have to be willing to take risks to move on, but you also have to be cognizant that there\u2019s a reason why people love these formats. What you\u2019re doing is a constant tweaking of the format, moving it forward, and hoping that you are adding value to the show. If you wait to react to a reduction in the audience before you make your changes, that\u2019s fatal. You need to be ahead of that. You can\u2019t be reactive; you have to be proactive in your producing.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> How much can you change a show before you start moving away from the DNA of the original format?
\nWADE:<\/strong> It depends on the format, quite frankly. When I was doing America\u2019s Got Talent<\/em>, it was the first season in America when we tried the Golden Buzzer, which was a great little format tweak. On Dancing with the Stars<\/em>, Conrad Green and I made a lot of changes to the format very early on because it felt like it needed them. Partly it was out of necessity. You\u2019re given a schedule\u2014ten two-hour episodes or eight two-hours, two 90-minutes and an hour\u2014and you have to make that time work. So you have to be creative about how you fill your time. We made some pretty big changes to that show and they worked. That\u2019s what you\u2019re paid to do as a producer or an executive\u2014judge how to move formats onward, to refract them, make them fresh, but not alienate your viewer. That\u2019s the skill.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> Beat Shazam<\/em> was a big success for you this summer. Why do you think it resonated so well with the FOX audience?
\nWADE:<\/strong> FOX does music brilliantly\u2014look at the legacy of Empire<\/em>, Star<\/em>, American Idol<\/em>. We\u2019re very good in that space and our viewers like it. Jamie Foxx is a phenomenal talent, and Jeff Apploff and Mark Burnett are great producers. We came up with a format that is just super clean. It\u2019s got big prize money and high stakes, so it\u2019s very broadcast. And obviously we partnered with Shazam, and the play-along-at-home aspect is great fun. In this era of multiplatform content, having that partnership has been great. There are various measures of the success of a television show, but I\u2019m old school. My judgment of the success of a television show that I\u2019m working on is how much my mother talks to me about it. [Laughs<\/em>] I\u2019m joking. My judgment honestly is how many people come up to me anecdotally and talk about it. I was talking to a woman at a party and she said, What do you do? I said I work at FOX. She said, What shows are on FOX? And I said, Beat Shazam<\/em>\u2026. She said, That\u2019s amazing, yesterday my 9-year-old had a Beat Shazam<\/em> birthday party! Hearing stuff like that makes me so excited. That\u2019s why I\u2019m in this business. It\u2019s that moment where culture meets television, and you go out of the linear broadcast and become part of the vernacular. That\u2019s why Beat Shazam<\/em> is successful\u2014it immediately, after one season, is already becoming part of the vernacular. It\u2019s living outside of its broadcast hour.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> How important is at-home interactivity with a show?
\nWADE:<\/strong> I can\u2019t [overstate] how important that is for all the big competition shows and the big reality shows. If you look at any of the big successful shows, they all have great social footprints and the ability to live on other platforms. It\u2019s still very difficult to quantify the reach of a show, but you know when you\u2019re doing the right thing. You have to have the television show living on different platforms, living on social media, living in the press. It helps from a marketing perspective. And it helps that FOX has the largest social footprint of all the networks. That means we live outside of those broadcast hours.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> Are you developing concepts internally that your distribution colleagues can sell globally as formats, or are you more focused on what\u2019s available on the global market?
\nWADE:<\/strong> I\u2019m from the creative part of the business, and the open market is how you get the greatest success. We want to attract the best producers and the best talent to FOX. And to do that, we are open to all American producers and international producers to come here and sell to us. The <\/em>Four<\/em> is [adapted from the] Armoza format from Israel, and we\u2019ve partnered them with ITV Entertainment in the U.S. Every show is different. Some are existing IP, some are brand-new IP, some are paper formats, some are from a pilot, some might be from a series abroad. We\u2019re very open to all of those things. We do have internal ideas, but when we have an internal idea we give it to someone [to produce]. So let\u2019s say I wanted to come up with a show that was about dating, for example. If I had a hook that I really liked, I would say, what about these production companies, and we\u2019d do a deal with them and they\u2019d go off and develop it and see if we can make it into a series. That\u2019s our method.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> You rebooted Love Connection<\/em> this year. Are there other classic properties you\u2019re looking at reviving? And what\u2019s the key to successfully bringing back a known, loved brand?
\nWADE:<\/strong> We\u2019re looking at everything. I came in here and I felt like we had to adjust our programming strategy in unscripted to a degree. What happened with Love Con<\/em>nection<\/em> was that it got a bit of an overhaul. If you\u2019re going to buy an older format that you want to survive beyond one season, you have to refresh it. That\u2019s one thing I\u2019ve noticed over here and in the U.K.\u2014sometimes when you buy existing IP, it burns bright at the beginning because there\u2019s a lot of sentiment from the viewers who want to see it coming back. So they\u2019ll watch it a lot in that first series, but if it\u2019s not good enough you\u2019ll see a big drop off, in particular in the second season. So you need to choose brands you can refresh, but you also need to leave time for brands to come back. It\u2019s not a good idea to bring a brand back too quickly. You need to make sure they\u2019ve had enough time to rest before they come back.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> Other than The Four<\/em>, what\u2019s on your upcoming slate?
\nWADE:<\/strong> We are picking up Love Connection<\/em> for season two. I\u2019m excited by a lot of our shows in development. As a producer, you need to get your ducks in a row on shows. You need to make sure you\u2019ve got a clear plan for them. We are developing a lot of stuff in broad, original, fun spaces. Whether it\u2019s dance, social experiment, variety or dating, we\u2019ve got a few things in the pipeline that are interesting. I arrived [at FOX] at the beginning of April and we had a few pitches\u2014The Four<\/em> was one of the first that came in\u2014and then it went a little bit quiet in the summer. But in the last couple of weeks I\u2019ve had some really good stuff coming in. I\u2019m looking for big things. I\u2019m a producer and your job as a producer is to take ideas and make them bigger. You usually see something in everything, to a degree. But every so often, something comes through and you\u2019re just like, wow, that\u2019s different and that\u2019s big and that\u2019s exciting. I\u2019ve seen a couple of those in the last few weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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