Global Television Formats: Genesis and Growth

Abstract

Beginning in 1999 with Big Brother, the international television industry has seen a succession of mega programme formats over the past fifteen years. Yet, while critical researchers scramble to make sense of this phenomenon, the fact is that the practice of media franchising is not new, even if its place in the spotlight is relatively recent. To support my overall claim about the longevity of programme replication, I will consider the trajectory of content remaking since the 1930s in terms of four periods. The article identifies the programme remaking that occurred in each stage. It also pinpoints a cluster of factors that helped precipitate each new phase, thereby contributing to the emerging field of global television format studies.

The use of international television formats by public service broadcasters in Australia, Denmark and Germany

“…Research by format scholars has revealed that PSBs have a long history of 'borrowing' programme ideas from abroad (Bourdon, 2012;Chalaby, 2012;Moran, 2013). Today the market is enforcing a system of intellectual property rights.…”

The commodification of television formats

“…The issue of having contracts between format licensers and licensees first emerged in the trade between an American television rights holder, Maurice Winnick, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the 1940s and the 1950s (Chalaby, 2012a). In this period, the BBC adapted three American shows from Despite the long relationship between the British and American broadcasting systems (Hilmes, 2012;Moran, 2013a), paying a fee for copying the concept of a show (i.e., a television format license fee) was a strange idea to the BBC. The BBC refused to pay license fees to Winnick, although it felt comfortable paying a fee for the scripts of It Pays to Be Ignorant and a labor fee for obtaining the American recordings.…”

“…Chapter 3 examines the emergence of format production companies (e.g., Endemol), now known as large European transnational production companies (Esser, 2016), super-indies (Chalaby, 2012b), or mini-major companies (Moran, 2013a) from the European territories. 2 I emphasize that the regulatory change (i.e., the Television Without Frontier Directive) in the European territories as described in Chapter 2 has not automatically determined the commodity form.…”

“…This chapter is about the conditions, particularly the European conditions, that made the new era of global format trade possible in the early 2000s. While the existing format research conceives the practice of formatting has long existed in television industries (Moran, 2013a), it cannot explain how independent production companies chose to use formats, particularly in Europe in the 1980s and the 1990s. By focusing on newly formed commercial-business relationships among domestic broadcasters and foreign independent production companies such as Action Time and Endemol, I argue that formatting was a particularly attractive practice for European independent production companies.…”

“…There may be several reasons for this blind spot. First, there is a view that the format has a long history focused on the continuity of the industrialized product and the practice of adapting televisual content (Moran, 2013a). From this view, a format has been a commodity since its conception.…”