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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: PGMC - Polity Global Media and Communication series
- Sprache: Englisch
Few trends have had as much impact on television as formats have in recent years. Long confined to the fringes of the TV industry, they have risen to prominence since the late 1990s. Today, they are a global business with hundreds of programmes adapted across the world at any one time, from mundane game shows to blockbuster talent competitions, from factual entertainment to high-end drama. Based on exclusive industry access, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the complex world of the TV format from its origins to the present day. Chalaby delivers a comprehensive account of the TV format trading system and conceptualizes the global value chain that underpins it, unpicking the corporate strategies and power relations within. Using interviews with format creators, he uncovers the secrets behind the world's most travelled formats, exploring their narrative structure and cultural meanings.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Introduction
What Is a TV Format?
Discovering the ‘Material Life’ of the TV Format Trade (Methodological Note)
Notes
Part I Birth of a New Trade
1 TV Formats as an Anglo-American Invention
The World’s First TV Format Agreements
Inventing Format Rights
ITV: An Early Boon for the Nascent Format Trade
The TV Format Trade as an Anglo-American Invention
‘High Culture’ Fights Back: Broadcasting Policy versus TV Formats
The US Game-Show Era
Format Pioneers and the 1978 Goodson Worldwide Agreement
The First Global TV Formats
End of an Era
Notes
2 The Making of an Entertainment Revolution
International Expansion and the Formation of two Format Powerhouses
The Rise of the British Independents
The US Market Opens Up
The Rise of Unscripted Programming and Reality Television
Formation of a Global Content Market
Global Information Flow
Conclusion: The Making of an Entertainment Revolution
Notes
3 The Advent of the Super-Formats
Millionaire: The Game that Rewrote the Rule Book
Discovering a New Planet: Reality Television
Big Brother
Idols: Opportunity Knocks Again, Again, and Again!
Influence and Legacy
Notes
Part II Production and Globalization
4 The Formation of the Format Trading System
World-Systems Theory and Global Value Chain (GVC) Analysis
Globalization
MipFormats: a new international event in the diary of TV executives
Trade press and market intelligence firms
Trade associations
The TV Format Global Value Chain
The input–output structure
Trade, Television and Globalization
Notes
5 Nations and Competition: Upgrading Strategies in the TV Format Global Value Chain
Benchmarking Upgrading Strategies: The British Case
From Local Production of Imports to Local Creation of Formats
Lesson one: vested interests must be challenged
Lesson two: the whole broadcasting ecology matters
Lesson three: use trade to hone your skills
Conclusion
Notes
6 A Globalized Intellectual Property Market: The International Production Model
Origins: From Grundy to Endemol and Pearson TV
International Consolidation Round 1: The 2000s
International Consolidation Round 2
Conclusion: Trade, Competition and Innovation
Notes
Part III TV Formats: Structuring Narratives
7 Journeys and Transformations: Unscripted Formats in the Twenty-First Century
Genres and Formats after the Format Revolution
Game Shows
Reality Programming
Notes
8 Talent Competitions: Myths and Heroes for the Modern Age
Singing
Dancing: Blood, Sweat and Glitterballs
The Apprentice, the Chef and the Model
Heroes with a Common Face
TV Formats as Franchises
Last Thoughts
Notes
9 Drama without Drama: The Late Rise of Scripted Formats
Scripted Formats before the TV Format Revolution
Understanding the Late Rise of Scripted Formats
Out of the Woods at Last: The Scripted Format Boom
Improved Knowledge Transfer
Conclusion: A Revolution Comes Full Circle
Notes
Conclusion: Trade, Culture and Television
Personal Communications and Interviews by the Author
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Tables
1.1 Leading TV formats/adapted shows in top five European markets, 1950s (in alphabetical order of original version)
1.2 Number of homegrown versus imported game shows, 1990
2.1 Endemol’s key formats, 1994
2.2 Pearson’s formats worldwide, 2000
2.3 Top fifteen independent production companies, UK, 1995
4.1 Key events in the diary of the international TV industry
4.2 Most common combinations within the TV format global value chain
4.3 Format exports, in terms of number of formats, number of hours, number of episodes and revenue, 2006–8
4.4 Ranking of TV format exporters versus ranking among exporters in world merchandise trade, 2008
4.5 Courts that have held that TV formats can be protected by copyright laws
4.6 Courts that have held that a TV format can in principle be protected by unfair competition laws
5.1 The leading super-indies, 2008
6.1 Evolution of the international TV production model, 1980s–2000s
6.2 The first fourteen TV production majors, 2010
6.3 Acquisitions by TV production majors, 2012–15
6.4 The world’s twelve TV production majors, 2015
7.1 Total hours of format programming by genre, 2002–4
7.2 Total number of exported episodes by genre, 2006–8
7.3 Top titles in Europe, 2012–13
7.4 A court’s comparison of the key elements of
Survivor
and
I’m a
Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!
8.1 Leading and upcoming talent competitions, 2000–15
8.2 TV formats and their spin-offs, various territories 9.1
Sons and Daughters
: local versions
9.2 Scripted formats ordered by US networks, statistics, 2012–15
9.3 Scripted formats ordered by US networks, titles and origin, 2012–15
9.4 Israeli TV series remakes
Figures
4.1 The TV format global value chain: input–output structure
4.2 Exported versus imported formats, by country
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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Global Media and Communication
Adrian Athique, Indian Media
Jean K. Chalaby, The Format Age
Terry Flew, Global Creative Industries
Myria Georgiou, Media and the City
Noha Mellor, Khalil Rinnawi, Nabil Dajani and Muhammad I. Ayish, Arab Media
Shani Orgad, Media Representation and the Global Imagination Stylianos Papathanassopoulos and Ralph Negrine, European Media
The Format Age
Television’s Entertainment Revolution
JEAN K. CHALABY
polity
Copyright © Jean K. Chalaby 2016
The right of Jean K. Chalaby to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2016 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0262-2
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chalaby, Jean K. The format age : television’s entertainment revolution / Jean K. Chalaby. pages cm. -- (Global media and communication) Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-5095-0258-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 1-5095-0258-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-5095-0259-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 1-5095-0259-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Television program genres. 2. Television programs--Social aspects. 3. Television and globalization. I. Title.
PN1992.55C47 2015 791.45’09--dc23
2015018308
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
For Jane, my wife
Acknowledgements
In the process of researching this book, I was fortunate to receive support from many people. First, I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the interviewees for their time and cooperation (see full list of interviewees before the references at the end of the book). Their insights into the format business have been invaluable and my endeavour would not have been possible without their contributions, in particular those of the industry leaders that have opened doors for me and supported my work. I am also grateful to Dr Andrea Esser and Dr Gerd Hallenberger for help on Germany and Northern Europe, Professors Michele Hilmes and Tom O’Malley for insightful suggestions on early sound broadcasting adaptations, and Professor Gary Gerrefi for his expert comments on my global value chain analysis. Jane, my wife, expertly edited the manuscript and acted as a sounding board for my ideas, and I am indebted to her. I gratefully acknowledge Polity’s anonymous readers for their constructive comments on the manuscript, and would like to thank Polity’s editorial team, notably Andrea Drugan, who commissioned the work, Elen Griffiths and India Darsley, for their help throughout the publishing process, and Fiona Sewell for her wonderful support in the preparation of the manuscript. I am also grateful to Sheila Munton, City University London Library, Jeff Walden, BBC Written Archives Centre, the librarians at Radio France’s Service Archives écrites et Musée, and my colleagues at City University London for the research leave that enabled me to finish this project. Last but not least, I would like to thank our three beautiful daughters, Felicity, Lucy and Jemima, for bearing with my absences during the final stages of this project.
Introduction
There are many reasons why TV formats – shows that are adapted to local audiences – deserve our full attention. Following a quiet fifty-year period, the format revolution that came with the new millennium suddenly transformed a small commerce that was lying at the fringe of the TV industry into a global business. Today, hundreds of shows are adapted across the world at any one time, reaching a cumulative value (in terms of distribution and production fees) of several billion dollars per year. In Europe alone, the income that broadcasters have generated from the top 100 formats reached US$2.9 billion in 2013 (TBI Formats, 2014a: 23). From a handful of companies in the 1990s, hundreds create, produce, distribute or acquire TV formats, with one firm alone, ITV Studios Global Entertainment, selling more than 4,300 hours’ worth of format in 2013 (TBI Formats, 2014a: 23).
The impact of formats on television is manifold, starting with TV schedules. In Europe, eighty-four channels aired 28,386 hours of formats in 2013 (the equivalent of 338 hours per channel) (TBI Formats, 2014a: 23). It is estimated that around a third of primetime programmes scheduled by American and German commercial broadcasters has been bought or sold for adaptation (Esser, 2013). In many a market, the top-rating shows and innovative cross-platform programmes, from game shows to talent competitions, are often formats. And gone are the times when trade was limited to reality and light entertainment: fiction has caught up. Telenovelas, dramas, crime series and comedies have joined the format revolution and are being remade across borders.
The TV format business is deepening media globalization on several counts. It has added volume and complexity to international TV flows. Finished programming still travels well but the format business has spawned a new market for the intellectual property (IP) that lies within TV shows. It is furthering the transnational interdependence of TV firms across the world by leading to the formation of a trading system that is global in scope (chapter 4). The system has not only enabled the emergence of the first TV production majors (chapter 6), but connected local broadcasters to a global value chain. These broadcasters used to be entirely nation-bound: their market was heavily protected against foreign competition, they aimed at self-sufficiency (producing much of what they aired) and their few suppliers were domestic (apart from the Hollywood studios). Today, even though they may still operate in a national market, they act as buyers in a global value chain and have many more international suppliers than in the past. They also make programming and scheduling decisions based on the ratings performance of shows in other territories.
Finally, the study of the TV format trade gives us an opportunity to shed light on the complex interaction between culture, globalization and capitalism. This book will argue that the TV format business can only be understood if economic history is taken into consideration, because the core engine of media globalization is the expansion of the capitalist world-system into IP trading. History partly explains why TV formats tend to travel on particular routes and why the format trading system reproduces features and patterns of earlier trades. History can also enlighten us on the likely cultural impact of TV formats, as their relationship with local cultures seems to follow patterns established by commodities made global by earlier trade routes.
Global media studies present many theoretical and methodological challenges. For several decades, the international communication field was suffused with methodological nationalism and its operating concepts were shaped by the politics of the nation-state. It was not so long ago that the exponents of the cultural imperialism thesis asserted that ‘powerful forces have been trespassing over national boundaries on an unprecedented scale’ and that ‘the preservation of national sovereignty may be understood best as a step in the still larger struggle to break the domination of the world business system’ (Nordenstreng and Schiller, 1979: ix and xii). Others pondered whether nations could retain control over television ‘in the face of foreign broadcasting’ (Negrine, 1988: 1). The institutions that commissioned international communication studies, such as UNESCO, were themselves a theatre of conflicting national interests and saw the world through the prism of the nation-state (Chalaby, 2007).
The discipline of international communication had to disentangle itself progressively from a nation-centric discourse. Once the myths of the cultural imperialism thesis were dispelled (e.g. Ang, 1985; Fejes, 1981; Liebes and Katz, 1993; Sinclair et al., 1996; Stevenson, 1984; Tomlinson, 1991; Tracey, 1985; Tunstall, 1977) a new paradigm could emerge, one less fearful of change and better equipped to face the complexities of global media. Attention began to be given to regional and transnational media flows (including those from the Global South to the West), the formation of hybrid cultures drawn from different locales, the phenomena of transnationalization and deterritorialization, and migrant media and transnational audiences (e.g. Chalaby, 2009; García Canclini, 1995; Gillespie, 1995; Thussu, 2007; Tomlinson, 1999).
Despite considerable progress, some international communication scholars felt that the new globalization paradigm needed to be rooted in a firm theoretical basis. It is in this context that Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitan outlook began to be discussed, as illustrated by Robins and Aksoy:
We are interested in developments and possibilities that move us beyond the national frame. We would situate our research agenda in the context of the cosmopolitan project addressed by Ulrich Beck… .Like Beck, we recognize that, in social research, the shift away from methodological nationalism will require us to radically scrutinize the naturalized categories of modern social science, which has been very much national social science – categories that now exist as ‘zombie categories’ [Beck, 2002: 24]. For if one sees and thinks through a national grid, then one is always likely to see national things – and we will argue that a great deal of research on transnational phenomena does precisely this. (Robins and Aksoy, 2005: 15–16)
According to the late German sociologist, methodological nationalism fails to grasp the ramifications of the process of globalization, which ‘not only alters the interconnectedness of nation-states and national societies but the internal quality of the social’ (Beck, 2000: 87). ‘Political, economic and cultural action and their (intended and unintended) consequences know no border’ and thus the ‘challenge is to devise a new syntax, the syntax of cosmopolitan reality’ (Beck, 2006: 18). This syntax is a perspective – a ‘vision’ – that does not take for granted the congruence between national societies and economic, social and political realities that have acquired a transnational dimension and which transform these societies from within.
However, despite Beck’s growing influence in international communication (e.g. Chalaby, 2009: 3; McCabe, 2013: 3), issues with the cosmopolitan outlook made it unsuitable for this study. Beck adopted a theoretical position that is normative in character and seeks to influence Europe’s political future as much as to analyse globalizing processes. As noted by Victor Roudometof, the notion of cosmopolitanism and related concepts are ‘prescriptive terms’ that ‘engage in the process of simultaneously assessing a pervasive feature of modern life and proposing ways policy-makers should deal with this reality’ (Roudometof, 2005: 116). The problem with this discursive strategy is both epistemological and methodological, as it affects the objectivity of the interpretative perspective and the instruments with which the social is measured. Too often with Beck, the line is blurred between the social reality that is claimed to be interpreted and the reality that normative concepts imagine into being. Second, apart from wishing for a ‘pacifist and cosmopolitan capitalism’, Beck has remarkably little to say about the economic dimension of globalization (Beck, 2005: 59–64).
An alternative theoretical framework was selected for this research that has to deliver on three objectives: to help us understand the historical evolution of the format trade, to explain the dynamic of the globalizing processes and to give insight into the commercial and industrial strategies of economic agents. This theoretical framework also needed to have the potential to make further contributions in international communication.
Whilst some of these objectives could be shared by political economists, deficiencies that lie at the core of their approach make it wholly unsuitable for the study of global media. As Nicholas Garnham, a pioneer of the political economy school, states: ‘much current PE [political economy] is underpinned by a crude and unexamined romantic Marxist rejection of the market per se, which has blocked analysis of how actual markets work and with what effects’ (Garnham, 2011: 42). A contribution was unlikely from an approach that ‘has become a euphemism for a vague, crude, and unself-questioning form of Marxism, linked to a gestural and self-satisfied, if often paranoid, radicalism’ (Garnham, 2011: 42).
This study, however, resides within a research tradition Garnham terms the ‘historical materialist analysis of the cultural sphere’ (Garnham, 2011: 41), and its theoretical underpinning is provided by a body of literature initially labelled global commodity chain (GCC) analysis, later evolving into global value chain (GVC) theory (Bair, 2009; Gereffi et al., 1994; Sturgeon, 2009). The benefits of the GVC approach will soon become apparent, but in short it gives us the possibility of understanding how the TV format trading system is organized at a global level and how the interplay between economic agents continuously reshapes it. It gives us an insight into the role of places and institutions, production patterns and trade routes, the power distribution within the TV format chain and the impact of regulation, national or otherwise. Above all, the GVC framework enables us to unfold the inner logic of media globalization and unveil one of its key engines. As the World Trade Organization (WTO) notes, as ‘companies divide their operations across the world, from the design of the product and manufacturing of components to assembly and marketing’, ‘international production networks or global value chains’ have become a mark of our times (WTO, 2013: 181). Today, trade within these chains is worth more than half the total value of non-fuel global exports: the WTO estimates that trade in intermediate goods was worth US$7,723 billion in 2011, or 55 per cent of world non-fuel exports (WTO, 2013: 182–3). This book tells the story of the formation of a new trade and the creation of a new global value chain.
The GVC approach was developed by Gary Gereffi and colleagues but was initiated by Hopkins and Wallerstein (Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1986). As is well known, the father of world-systems theory was inspired by Fernand Braudel, who was also called upon to theorize the TV format trade as a transnational singular space (chapter 4). A fundamental methodological principle laid down by Braudel and the Annales School as a whole was also selected for this study: l’observation concrète, as he called it, comes before theory and ideology. While Braudel acknowledged the contribution of theoretical models, only a thorough empirical analysis of the observable reality, he argued, can reveal trends and patterns previously unnoticed. He contended that it is only after carefully studying the economic data and statistics of pre-industrial Europe that he noticed how little connection there was between this period and the grand theories that claimed to understand it (Braudel, [1967] 1992: 23). This basic principle is rarely observed in contemporary media studies, a discipline where academics too often appoint themselves judges of good taste and guardians of democracy.
The benefits of following this approach are extensive yet counter-intuitive. Lucien Febvre, the co-founder of the Annales School with Braudel, applied this method with spectacular success in his seminal The Coming of the Book. Febvre and co-author Martin (who carried out the project following Febvre’s death) were among the first to understand how the advent of the printed book transformed the Western world and helped bring about modernity by augmenting available material and creating un système perspectif nouveau (Febvre, 1997: 10). But they also knew that printing was a fledgling industry and the printed book a commodity, and meticulously described how printers, authors, tradesmen and booksellers went about their business and how the whole industry developed across Europe, from printing workshops to book fairs.
As will be seen, TV formats are complex and multi-faceted products whose study benefits from a multi-disciplinary approach. Thus, this book complements the GVC framework with concepts borrowed from anthropology, sociology, management studies and narrative studies. It also draws from the body of literature on the creative industries (including texts from the earlier ‘cultural industries’ label), as this research aims to analyse the globalization of television in the wider context of rapid industrial and technological change that is happening across these industries (e.g. Flew, 2012, 2013; Garnham, 2005; Hesmondhalgh, 2013; Holt and Perren, 2009; Lacroix and Tremblay, 1997b; Kunz, 2007; Lotz, 2007; Miller, 2011; Winseck, 2012).
The book is organized in three parts: the first is devoted to the history of trade, the second to the format business in a global context, and the third to TV formats themselves. Chapter 1 traces back the origins of the TV format trade, uncovering the world’s first deals and identifying the first TV formats. Gathering evidence from previously unseen BBC written archives, this chapter shows how the key principles of the format business were established as early as the 1950s. It also contends that the TV format industry can be labelled an Anglo-American invention because the first format licences were exchanged between British and American broadcasters. Then, this chapter examines the next stage in the history of the trade and analyses how the 1978 Goodson Worldwide Agreement opened up the US game-show era.
The foundations of today’s multi-billion-dollar industry that comes with trade bodies, awards ceremonies in Cannes, and formats that travel around the world at blazing speed and top ratings in fifty-plus territories were laid down in the 1990s. Chapter 2 examines the factors behind the TV format revolution that unfolded with the new millennium. How did the first super-formats sweep the world, and why did a fifty-year-old fringe activity become so central to the TV industry in the space of a few years? As always, profound changes were triggered by a powerful congruence of factors.
Although formats were crossing borders in growing numbers by the end of the 1990s, many TV executives needed the rise of the super-formats in order to take notice. Supported by exclusive interviews with their creators, chapter 3 tells the story of four exceptional formats that changed the face of television: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Survivor, Big Brother and Idols.
Part II begins with chapter 4, which offers an in-depth study of the formation of the TV format trading system. The chapter opens with an examination of the globalization of the trade in the 2000s, analysing the format traffic figures that reveal a complex trade flow. It also looks at the arrival of new firms in the business and the organizations, including market fairs, the trade press and trade associations, which support that system.
The chapter then focuses on the global value chain that lies at the system’s core and which is the outcome of the process of disintegration of production that took place in the TV industry. The chapter determines the chain’s input–output structure and scrutinizes its governance, examining the balance of power between buyers and suppliers. It then establishes the chain’s geographical configuration, identifying three tiers of format exporters and the trade routes along which many formats travel. Then, considering the chain’s institutional framework, this chapter argues that the format trade has begun to be protected by an embryonic international regulatory regime and that it stands on firmer legal ground than ever before. The viability of this trade rests almost entirely on the recognition of IP rights that are increasingly acknowledged by courts of law around the world.
A startling aspect of the TV format revolution has been the emergence of a new trade leader: the UK. In a short timeframe, a country used to relying heavily on US imports has turned itself into the world’s leading format exporter. Chapter 5 argues that the UK should be considered as the international benchmark for upgrading strategies in the TV content sector and posits the following question: can this process be duplicated elsewhere? This chapter assesses the upgrading strategies of those nations that have embarked on the journey from the local production of imports to the local creation of formats.
Chapter 6 analyses the modern production of TV formats, arguing that a new business model has emerged in recent years. In the early decades of the TV format trade, rights holders simply sold a show’s licence to a local production company or broadcaster who would then adapt and produce it for a local audience. Many formats are still produced under licence but firms increasingly favour a new production model: wherever possible, rights holders prefer to adapt and produce their shows themselves in as many markets as possible, a strategy that has in turn led to the international expansion of TV production companies.
First, this chapter offers an overview of the international production model, tracing back its origins and exploring its development in recent years. It shows how it was pioneered by game-show producers before being adopted by British independent production companies and European broadcasters, and eventually by Hollywood studios. The chapter argues that this model is a key factor in the two recent waves of sector consolidation that led to the emergence of the first international TV production majors. The second part contextualizes it, arguing that TV production companies have had to adapt to the globalization of the IP market created by the format trading system. Using interviews with TV executives and creative leaders, this section reviews the risks and benefits associated with this model in terms of IP generation, exploitation and protection.
The final part of the book explores key contemporary trends in the TV format trade. Chapter 7 opens up with a brief analysis of the relationship between the format industry and TV genres, examining how the trade has progressed from game shows to reality to fiction. It then provides an overview of key formats in the game-show genre and across three reality strands: observational documentaries, factual entertainment and reality competitions. Close attention is paid to the narrative structure of these shows and, illustrating the argument with material gathered in interviews, this chapter explains how the TV industry has learnt to tell a story without a script.
Chapter 8 focuses on a key reality strand for the format trade: talent competitions. It analyses their narrative structure and, in order to understand their essence, it compares and contrasts them with hero myths from other civilizations. This chapter also explores the emergence of the TV franchise, that is, a format that no longer merely crosses borders but also platforms.
Chapter 9 focuses on the format trade in the scripted space, which covers the full spectrum of serials (soaps, series and telenovelas) and scripted genres from drama and comedy to constructed reality programming. The binarism between scripted and unscripted programmes may appear blunt as shows labelled by the industry as ‘unscripted’ may in fact be partially scripted; however, I use these labels to align with the trade.1 The industry grew on the back of unscripted (or partly scripted) shows, and while the TV format revolution initially bypassed scripted formats, their number has risen sharply of late. Analysing both the reasons for this late rise and the factors behind it, this chapter shows that the adaptation of scripted formats is more complex and risks remain higher than for other genres. The underlying economics of their production and distribution also differs from non-scripted formats. When demand for drama increased worldwide, Hollywood studios began to mine their catalogues, new exporters and scripted genres emerged, and knowledge transfer techniques improved.
The conclusion connects this study with theories of international communication and makes an intervention in the debate between proponents of media imperialism and cosmopolitan globalization. It also assesses the cultural impact of the TV format trade.
What Is a TV Format?
Formats are notoriously difficult to fathom. Cynics say that a format is any show that anyone is willing to pay for, and some lawyers claim there is no such thing as a format since ideas cannot be copyrighted. Formats are indeed complex and multi-faceted cultural commodities that can be defined in four dimensions.
The TV format as a licensed remake
First and foremost, a TV format is a show based on the format rights of an existing show, that is, a remake produced under licence. This aspect is revealed clearly in the following two definitions by Christoph Fey, former managing director of the Format Recognition and Protection Association (FRAPA): a format is ‘a recipe for “making remakes”’ and format trading is ‘the selling of remake rights which enable buyers to produce a local remake of the original programme tailored to suit their domestic television market’ (EBU, 2005: 3).
Format rights emerged in the 1950s (chapter 1) and while their legal foundations have progressed they are not always respected and protected (chapter 4). A leading UK-based distributor (the company has asked not to be mentioned) defines format rights, for their own purpose, as follows:
‘Format Rights’ means (a) the right to license third parties outside the territory of the Primary Broadcaster the right to develop and produce one or more New Programmes based on the Format; (b) the right to authorize such third parties to distribute, exhibit, perform, broadcast or otherwise exploit such New Programmes in the territory where the New Programmes are produced in perpetuity; and (c) the right for Distributor to exploit the New Programmes in any media worldwide and/or license such right to a third party. (2012)
These rights exist alongside others, which include:
Ancillary rights
are all the rights to exploit a programme (or any elements thereof in whole or in part) in any media, and comprise merchandising rights, interactive and multimedia rights, music publishing rights, online rights, publishing rights, radio rights, record rights, stage rights and theatric rights.
Clip sales rights
(the right to sell or license extracts from the programme for inclusion in other programmes or other media).
Television rights
cover broadcaster new media rights, collecting society rights, interactive television rights, non-theatric rights and video-on-demand rights.
Video rights
(meaning the right to manufacture, duplicate, promote, distribute and sell or rent the programme on or in a videogram such as videocassette, DVD, UMD, CD ROM and any other similar device).
When a legal issue arises, not all TV formats are equal before the law. Scripted formats are the most easily protectable because ideas are expressed in simply identifiable storylines and characters, whilst the rules and structure of a reality show can be difficult to safeguard against copyright infringement. The point was made by Fey when commenting on a 2003 judgement by the German Supreme Court which stipulated that copyright laws cannot be applied to TV formats:
We hope to use the analogy of the novel [in future legal cases] to prove that formats are copyrightable. Intellectual properties like novels go beyond words on the page but are about the characters and their relationships. Similarly, TV formats should be seen as a narrative of televisual events arranged in a time sequence. (in Waller, 2005)
It explains why FRAPA’s own definition places the emphasis on storytelling: ‘In the making of a television program, an ordering of television elements such that a distinctive narrative progression is created’ (Gilbert, interview 2008). Indeed, as will be detailed in chapters 7 and 8, unscripted formats create and organize a narrative similarly to fiction:
Supernanny, Faking It, Wife Swap, The Apprentice, Secret Millionaire and Grand Designs – all giants of the reality genre. All have very clear first and last acts – a call to action and a final judgment – but between them too, within the constraints of reality they’re derived from, the same structure as Shakespeare, as Terence and as Horace. In all you can see the pattern – initial enthusiasm, goals achieved, things falling apart, catastrophe faced and victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. The king of them all, The X Factor, works by following a very clear – if elongated – act structure; in fact all reality television is built on classic Shakespearean shape. (Yorke, 2013: 195)
Among the differences is the way the story is engineered. Unscripted formats replace the script with an engine (Keane and Moran, 2008). The engine is essentially the set of rules and format points designed to create dramatic arcs and storylines. Format points are the distinctive elements (which may or may not be entirely original) that support the storytelling. They can be an object (e.g. the piles of cash in Money Drop), a particular task or challenge in a factual entertainment show, or a special feature such as the swivel chairs in The Voice. The classic reality engine is the elimination process, which can be structured in countless ways and organized around a variety of format points to suit different competitions. Drama is also created with trigger moments (also known as ‘jeopardy’ moments), the equivalent of cliffhangers in fiction. In reality programming, such moments are produced by unexpected twists or nomination nights; in quiz shows, jeopardy is generated with questions worth a large sum of money; in talent competitions, such moments occur when the presenter announces the outcome of the public vote. Finally, reality shows also build a dramatic arc around the protagonist’s transformation (Yorke, 2013: 196), whether it is a process of self-discovery (e.g. Wife Swap), the opening up of a new career (e.g. MasterChef ) or the journey to fame (e.g. Got Talent). Using different techniques, both scripted and unscripted formats tell stories (chapters 7 and 8).
The TV format as a recipe
The TV format as a recipe covers two ideas. First, it points to the fact that a format combines a kernel of rules and principles that are immutable and elements that are adaptable as it travels. This is the most common definition. For instance, Albert Moran, an Australian scholar who pioneered format studies, equates a format to a ‘cooking recipe’, that is, a ‘set of invariable elements in a programme out of which the variable elements of an individual episode are produced’ (Moran, 2006: 20). Michel Rodrigue, a 1990s industry pioneer, explains that:
A format is a recipe. A format is not a product, it is a vehicle, and thus the only raison d’être of formats is the international market. […] the format is a vehicle which enables an idea to cross boundaries, cultures, and so on, and to be localized in every place where it stops. (Rodrigue, interview 2008, my translation)
These elements are succinctly echoed by Nadine Nohr, chief executive officer of Shine International: ‘you have a recipe and you can migrate it around the world and ad lib the sensibilities’ (Nohr, interview 2013). These quotes hint at the transnational nature of format trading. Since the licence of a programme cannot be bought twice in the same territory (in the same period of time), a show becomes a format only once adapted outside its country of origin. But formats do not merely fly across borders: they change as they do so and always involve an interplay between the local and the global. Format rules might be global but their adaptation is local. Formats acknowledge both the universality of great ideas and the perennial nature of local cultures and languages.
As a recipe, a TV format is also a formula, an idea which is best illustrated with the analogy of sport. A football game is played according to rules established by an international association. These rules – the engine – set how the game is played, where it is played (the size of the pitch) and for how long. Let’s now take a football game played in a local competition. Supporters pay for their season ticket beforehand, journalists put the game in their diaries and the TV rights are sold years in advance. Everything is set: the date, the place, the duration and even the promise of a resolution. What is a football game? A stage set for a specific outcome, an arena for managed and reliable unpredictability, as is a TV format. In the words of David Liddiment, former director of programmes at ITV, co-founder of All3Media and BBC trustee:
Stephen Lambert [creator of some of the world’s leading formats in factual entertainment] worked out that what broadcasters want is they want to know the outcome, they don’t want to commission a film with an outcome they don’t know. So what a format does is it creates an outcome, it creates an arc, a story and it does it week in week out, so you can manufacture it like a production line. So what starts as a form, which is a singular individual voice, the documentary becomes part of factory television. (Liddiment, interview 2011)
This applies to all (good) TV formats. For instance, talent competitions do not need to concoct a winner. For the broadcaster, it is enough to know that the format rules will generate drama during the process and an outcome at the end. A TV format is ‘about creating moments with absolute certainty that something interesting will happen and having the camera in the right place to capture it’ (Liddiment, interview 2011). Like a football game!
The TV format as a proof of concept
Outcome management is one good reason that has made the TV format trade a multi-billion-dollar business, and another is risk management. The format industry rests on a compelling premise: the willingness of broadcasters to pay for the privilege of outsourcing risk. Formats do not travel alone and are preceded by ratings data that TV buyers browse before committing themselves. This data details the show’s performance in a large array of territories, scheduling scenarios, channels and audiences. Performance in some countries matters more than in others and TV executives look for ratings on channels similar to theirs (public service, youth-skewed, etc.) (chapter 4). If the show’s ratings performance is internationally consistent, it indicates that the structure of the programme is solid – the proof of concept – and buyers like to think that an adaptation will perform equally well in their territory. A track record does not offer them a guarantee of success but will at least enable them to manage risk.
The TV format as a method of production
Acquiring a format licence is a way of getting hold of a show that has been in development for several years and produced in several other countries. This accumulated knowledge is part of the format package and a licensing agreement leads to a significant transfer of expertise. Licensees obtain a document that is known as the ‘production bible’ which teaches local teams everything they need to know in order to produce the show. These can run to hundreds of pages and contain information about run-throughs, budgets, scripts, set designs, graphics, casting procedures, host profile, the selection of contestants, and every other possible aspect associated with the show’s production.
Bibles also lay out the format rules, determining the elements that can be altered and those which must remain intact. As already seen, formats are geared up to hit specific points throughout the narrative and are constructed to take viewers through a succession of emotional states. As with civil engineering, miscalculating a pressure point can lead to the collapse of the entire edifice. Thus, a bible is intended to protect the show’s mechanics and guard against ill-thought-out modifications.
Production bibles contain a certain amount of local knowledge. These documents can be updated with information accumulated in the territories where the show is produced. If an idea that is tried in a market works, it is passed on; if it fails, licensees are warned against it. As Sue Green, an industry veteran, explains, a format is a show that has been ‘debugged’ to remove ‘the mistakes that have been made that won’t be made again’ (Green, interview 2010). Therein lies the third reason behind the extraordinary growth of the format business: as production is being refined from one territory to another – and from one year to the next – costs are gradually driven down. The refinement of the production model, which is consigned to the bible, constitutes one of the key economic benefits of format licensing.
Information is also passed on by consultant producers (sometimes known as ‘flying’ producers), whose role it is to help local teams set up the show. They will stay on site as long as necessary, as their remit is governed by the complexity of the show. If the show is still produced in its country of origin, local teams can be invited to visit the original set. Leading brands such as The Bachelor, Come Dine with Me and Dancing with the Stars organize international conferences for local licensees and share knowledge (interviews with producers, clips of local episodes, videos of the set layout, etc.) on intranet websites.
A successful transfer of expertise is in the interest of all parties. Formats are bought with the hope of ratings success and licensees need to understand the show’s principles as well as they can. Getting a local hit is equally important for the vendor because a ratings failure in a major territory can damage a format’s prospects. The heads of acquisitions and programming that scan the world TV market can lose interest in a show if they sense any sign of weakness (Clark, interview 2008). I would define the formatting process thus: a TV format is the structure of a show that can generate a distinctive narrative and is licensed outside its country of origin in order to be adapted to local audiences.
Discovering the ‘Material Life’ of the TV Format Trade (Methodological Note)
Without neglecting the academic literature, this study privileges primary sources in order to uncover new practices and processes, reveal current trends and enrich the theoretical debate with new findings. It relies on two ranges of sources: trade press and trade reports, and in excess of sixty interviews that were conducted over a six-year period. Many were conducted in London but my interviewees cover a wide range of countries and industry roles from creative leaders to high-ranking executives. There are many benefits to interviews, apart from the fact that they are exclusive to this research. First, they are the only way of gathering information about facts and occurrences that so far are not in the public space. Hypotheses can be checked, theories can be tested and anecdotes can be collected. Seemingly minute details and trivial episodes can turn out to be important pieces of the puzzle and be invaluable in the reconstruction of the chain of events. Interviews also offer an insight into personal impressions and experiences that are also part of the industry. Only format creatives know how they stumbled upon an idea, who helped them develop it and what commissioners told them behind closed doors. Industry leaders with decades of experience are often reflective about their trade, and those who were kind enough to share their wisdom made a great contribution to this research. Interviews made it possible to discover the ‘material life’, to follow Febvre and Braudel, of the TV format trade and depict an altogether intimate and accurate picture of this industry.
In any study of the creative industries, there will be a tension between the ‘model of the creative genius’ that leans on ‘atomistic concepts of human nature and human action’ and structural approaches that lay emphasis on ‘social and market structures and regulation that shape innovations, and creativity, and their success and failure’ (Pratt and Jeffcutt, 2009: 267). Although ‘individuals are a primary source of creativity’ (Jeffcutt and Pratt, 2002: 226), interviews can exacerbate the danger of attributing too much weight to agency and couch history in terms of the choices and opportunities available to creators and industry leaders. This risk, however, is countered by the global value chain framework, which is both historical and structuralist in scope.
Finally, some material in this book is based on previously published articles, notably in the European Journal of Communication, the International Communication Gazette, the Journal of Media Business Studies, Media, Culture & Society and Television & New Media. However, a great deal of research has taken place since these publications and this text completes, and sometimes corrects, these articles.
Notes
1
Staff, teams and sometimes even companies tend to specialize in one or the other type. In the USA, for instance, where networks were driven by comedy and drama, the first international reality formats were handled by newly established alternative programming departments, as was the case at Fox or ABC (Wong, interview 2014).
Part IBirth of a New Trade
1TV Formats as an Anglo-American Invention
This chapter traces back to the origins of the TV format trade, uncovering those first deals and identifying the first formats to be aired across Europe. It shows how the key principles of the format industry were established by the early 1950s and contends that it is an Anglo-American invention, because the first format licences were adaptations of US shows acquired by British broadcasters. This chapter surveys the evolution of the trade up until the US game-show era, which started with the 1978 Goodson Worldwide Agreement.
The World’s First TV Format Agreements
Cross-border adaptations began in the sound broadcasting era and versions of US shows appeared on the BBC in the late 1920s. Adaptations also travelled to several Commonwealth countries, particularly Australia and Canada. Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour was an early favourite. A talent show that first aired in New York in 1934, it was adapted by the BBC in 1936 and four years later by a commercial station in Australia (Camporesi, 2000: 92, 119–20; Griffen-Foley, 2009: 212, 260). In March 1937, the BBC showed a version of an NBC contest called Spelling Bees and then, two years later, its first quiz show, Information, Please (also from NBC), which became The Brains Trust on the Corporation’s Home Service (Camporesi, 2000: 121–4). For the British broadcaster, the United States was a steady source of inspiration despite an overall ambivalent attitude towards American entertainment. The programmes selected by the BBC were popular, hence the rather acerbic comments published in Radio Pictorial in March 1938:
Why is it that the B.B.C. has been so slow to appreciate the appeal of this form of entertainment, and so loath to follow where America leads the way? The B.B.C. has its own representative in New York whose job is to pick up new ideas for transportation over here, and famous variety chiefs such as Eric Maschwitz have been in constant touch with the American studios. Yet the Spelling Bee was a radio feature for many years in the States before it was given its tardy radio debut in this island. It is the same story of the ‘Amateur Hour’ all over again. (cited in Camporesi, 2000: 122)
While it is unlikely that licences were acquired for these unscripted shows, scripts legally changed hands in the sound broadcasting era, and the Australian radio stations purchased scripts of the American dramas they were adapting in the 1930s (Griffen-Foley, 2009: 212–16). In the next two decades, when Havana was Latin America’s broadcasting hub, Cuban scripts for radionovelas travelled across the region. This trade was started by US advertising agencies, such as J. Walter Thompson and McCann-Erickson, interested in generating audiences in which to advertise the products of their clients (which included General Motors and Procter & Gamble) (Rivero, 2009). It was Richard Penn, an American radio specialist who worked on the marketing of Colgate-Palmolive, who brought the first Cuban script to Brazil. Em busca da felicidade [In Search of Happiness] aired in 1941 on Ràdio Nacional, establishing a model for future local adaptations in the region based on international formats (McCann, 2004: 217–18).
After the Second World War, the BBC returned to America for ideas, and the world’s first format to air on television (albeit only once) was a comedy panel radio show called It Pays to Be Ignorant
