 Your once-a-month recap for trends in the factual and non-scripted formats sectors, with news digests, interviews, analysis & more. |
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What's Inside:
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Anatomy of a Social, Broadcast & Streaming Hit—The Love Island Case Study
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Revivals & A Landmark Doc Returns—7 Up's Final Installment & Format Comebacks
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Dori Media Builds a Franchise with Power Couple—A Conversation with Nadav Palti & Maria Perez Campi
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Adapting to Thrive—The View from BIG Media’s Jon Loew
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News, YouTube & FTA Broadcasters—The TF1 & Gaspard Guermonprez Case Study
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Japan’s Rising Soft Power—Entertainment Format Deals
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Commissioning Shifts—Examples from BossaNova Media & Off the Fence
- Channel Hopping—FAST, Pay & AVOD
- Get Digital—YouTube, Podcasts & Creators
- Wild Times—Nature & Wildlife Deals
- MegaBrands—Adaptations & Tape Sales
- Taking a Chance—New Format Breakthroughs
- Curiosity & Creativity—A Chat with Harry King TV’s Nicholas Sercombe
Anatomy of a Social, Broadcast & Streaming Hit
ITV Studios’ Ruth Berry, Martin Trickey, and Will Scougal were in Lisbon for StreamTV Europe to talk about how Love Island continues to draw audiences across broadcast and streaming while also building a thriving social media footprint.
“We realized a few years ago that we had a really interesting hit with a fan base who wants to engage with the show and have it as a daily conversation with their lives,” said Berry, president of global partnerships at ITV Studios, of the format, which has been remade in some 28 markets.
"Will [Scougal, EVP for brand and commercial partnerships] came to me last summer and said, Did you know that there are 87,000 pieces of creator content for Love Island on TikTok alone in the first six months of this year? So how do we become part of that conversation?”
Constant amplification, while the show is on air and between seasons, is paramount. Figuring out how to do that was part of the genesis for Zoo 55, ITV Studios’ digital business, led by Trickey as MD.
“We posted 9 billion views worth of content ourselves, but 49 billion views worth of content was created by the fans,” Trickey said. That chatter informs the show, which is produced on a quick-turnaround basis, he said. “Producers can go in, listen to the fans, and then see who’s popular, who’s not, and then tweak the show. But there’s a balance, because another reason the show is talked about so much is its authenticity. The hand of the producer is not that heavy.”
Revivals & A Landmark Doc Returns
The late Michael Apted’s landmark 7 Up collection is set for a final installment at ITV. The first 7 Up film screened in 1964 as part of ITV’s World in Action strand. Every seven years, Apted returned to check in on the 14 participants, from childhood through teen years, marriage, divorce, loss, and more. Award-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia is now taking the lead on the beloved doc franchise with 70 Up, checking in on the participants in their retirement years. Jo Clinton-Davis, controller of factual at ITV, said, “The 7 Up story is much more than a TV documentary; it’s a document of our times. A truly distinctive landmark piece of filmmaking that has become part of our cultural fabric.” Channel 4, meanwhile, has resurrected One Born Every Minute, the fixed-rig ob doc that ran from 2010 to 2018, with Banijay UK’s Dragonfly TV for E4.
The format business featured a lot of headlines about shows returning after being off the air in markets for years. MasterChef Asia, the pan-regional version of the hit Banijay Entertainment format, is returning this year after a ten-year hiatus. Another Banijay format, Deal or No Deal is returning to two key markets: the Philippines with ABS-CBN and Türkiye with atv. The All3Media International format Naked Attraction, created by Studio Lambert for Channel 4, is returning to Poland courtesy of Endemol Shine Poland and Zoom TV.
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Nadav Palti, CEO of Dori Media, and Maria Perez Campi, director of sales for LatAm and the U.S. Hispanic market, discuss why Power Couple has traveled so well across the globe.
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Jon Loew, CEO of BIG Media, talks about the company’s recent CIA series on National Geographic, Disney+, and Hulu; navigating seismic shifts in the business; evolving funding models; and the importance of volume. Navigating the business today requires making “change your best friend,” Loew said. “It’ll be the only thing with you for your entire life.”
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TF1’s Julien Laurent, content creator Gaspard Guermonprez, and YouTube’s Pedro Pina gave StreamTV Europe delegates a masterclass on how legacy free-to-air broadcasters can use social video to engage younger audiences with news content. Guermonprez was just 10 years old when he started a YouTube channel; 18 years later, he is among France’s most popular content creators and is charting a new path with TF1 to engage young audiences with insightful news content in the run-up to the 2027 French election. “TF1 is incredibly successful on YouTube,” said Pina, VP for Europe at YouTube. "It has more than 60 YouTube channels, more than 2 billion views last year, and continues to grow tremendously. TF1 is one of the biggest believers in YouTube and invests heavily in it each year. They have also realized that there is an audience out there that is not benefiting from the great content it produces. People like Gaspard understand the voice, the tone, and how that content needs to be delivered. TF1 understands how an incremental audience is generated. And Gaspard has the opportunity to be connected to a brand that has one of the highest levels of trust in news production in France.”
The Japanese government launched its revamped “New Cool Japan” strategy in 2024, aiming to increase international revenues from the country’s cultural exports to ¥50 trillion by 2033. At the time, it said cultural export revenues were valued at ¥4.7 trillion, a tenfold increase in a decade. Content is a primary growth engine; the mission statement for New Cool Japan lays out a goal of ¥20 trillion by 2033. Entertainment formats are a key part of the Japanese ecosystem, and over the last few months, the sector has seen a raft of gains. Banijay Entertainment, which makes Yoshimoto Kogyo’s Prime Video hit LOL in 11 markets, has secured the rights to remake the comedy powerhouse’s The Laughing Throne and You Laugh You Lose across its 23-market footprint, and Fremantle landed production, development, and distribution rights to Special Delivery, co-developed by Blue Circle and TBS, outside Japan. Nippon TV is doubling down on its international unscripted format business, hiring ITV America alum Nick Ower to position the Nippon TV and Gyokuro Studio unscripted format slates with broadcasters, streamers, and producers across the Americas.
Commissioning Shifts
For the first time, BossaNova Media is guaranteeing the whole production budget for a show, committing to a new eight-part "mystery-history" series from Like A Shot that uses CGI to reanimate ruins from the ancient world. Ruins Rise And Fall emerged out of one of the company’s Development Days. “Some projects you invest in are bit of a risk; Ruins Rise And Fall isn’t one of them,” said Paul Heaney, BossaNova CEO and founder. “Using cutting-edge technology to reinvent the sub-genre and to fulfill a need that we feel is there, but due to a lack of commissions in this area, isn’t. This is where BossaNova can work its magic.”
Bo Stehmeier, CEO of Off The Fence, highlighted the need for new commissioning models when announcing the company’s deal with Wildbear Entertainment and Insight TV for the new science series Ever Wonder. “Science programming is scarce, and buyers consistently express the need for modular, overarching strands that can support AVOD strategies alongside traditional channels,” Stehmeier said. “For producers, the market’s complexity and fragmentation create significant challenges. WSMG simplifies this journey by engaging early with creators, thinking long-term, and developing IP designed from inception to perform across multiple platforms and territories. Our approach has been crafted to create an environment for ambitious factual ideas to scale sustainably, backed by our reach, commercial expertise, and commitment to lasting impact.”
Get Digital—YouTube, Podcasts & Creators
News about digital-facing strategies over the last month included France Télévisions entering into a strategic partnership with YouTube. France Télévisions will make thousands of hours of content available on YouTube every year shortly after the linear broadcast. The slate will include news and all of the group’s flagship daily and weekly current affairs and investigative magazines. The agreement also calls for "enhanced editorial curation" by France Télévisions with channels sorted by show and theme, plus digital-native programming. To drive monetization, France TV Publicité will directly commercialize its inventory on the platform. BIG Media is joining forces with Insurgence for a portfolio of 60 documentary channels on YouTube, powered by more than 2,000 hours from its library. “This multichannel launch represents BIG Media’s most significant commitment to YouTube to date, and Insurgence has made it possible to execute at an unprecedented scale,” said Jon Loew, CEO of BIG Media. “This initiative allows us to activate our library in a way that is both global in reach and highly targeted by audience interest.” Hearst Media Production Group (HMPG) enlisted Merzigo to help it scale its digital presence across social and video platforms. Little Dot Studios established an in-house podcast and video studio at its London HQ, with the facility initially being used to centralize production for History Hit. Creator-led content outfit PAVE Studios unveiled Rewind, a brand focused on history, launching with Hidden History, hosted by Dr. Harini Bhat, on YouTube and as an audio podcast. MTV UK is bringing a new digital-first dating series to its YouTube channel, with social clips set for Instagram and TikTok.
Channel Hopping—FAST, Pay & AVOD
Blue Ant Media continues to see traction for its slate of factual channels, in the last month securing a slot with DELTA in the Netherlands for Love Nature and Joyn in Germany for NatureTime. Sky and its Sky Documentaries channel announced a slate of commissions in April, unveiling The Lie That Exposed The Truth from Sandpaper Films; Katie Price: Nothing to Hide from Louis Theroux’s Mindhouse; Savage Mountain, which chronicles Kristin Harila’s record-breaking "14 Peaks" climb and the controversy that followed; and a feature special from RAW about the bomb attack on the Manchester Arena in May 2017. Canadian public broadcaster CBC is upping its documentary spend by C$7 million and is rolling out a new FAST channel this fall to replace the specialty service documentary Channel, which is ceasing operations at the end of August. Elsewhere in the FAST space, Radial Entertainment now holds the rights to all ten seasons of the World’s Most Evil Killers library, encompassing 200 episodes for a total of more than 150 hours of content, for use across its FAST and AVOD footprint in North America. LG Electronics joined forces with Simple Alien to launch the creator-led All Chewed Up culinary and lifestyle network on LG Channels.
Wild Times—Nature & Wildlife Deals
The BBC revealed that Sir David Attenborough will narrate Blue Planet III as it celebrated the iconic natural history storyteller’s 100th birthday. ZDF Studios secured the worldwide distribution rights to the one-hour special Lord Howe Island—Reset of Paradise, exploring the remote island in the Pacific Ocean. Off the Fence, John Downer Productions, and One Tribe TV are jointly developing a slate of natural history projects for the global market. Autentic secured the rights to distribute more than 20 hours of premium factual back-catalog from France's Boréales, following its previous work with the acclaimed production company on The Archipelago.
MegaBrands—Adaptations & Tape Sales
It was another good month for the format business’s most iconic properties, both in terms of reversions and tape sales. The digital channel VGTV is the new home of Love Island in Norway, commissioning a local edition and securing several international adaptations of the hit ITV Studios format. All3Media International is seeing strong traction in tape sales for its various iterations of The Traitors, licensing the Indian version, made for Prime Video, to BBC iPlayer. The Banijay Entertainment format MasterChef has landed its first-ever live 24/7 version, produced by EndemolShine Boomdog in Mexico. And a newer entrant into the rankings of top formats, The 1% Club, which is distributed globally by BBC Studios, secured a three-year commitment from ITV.
Taking a Chance—New Format Breakthroughs
There does remain opportunity for new shows to break through, with “first international remake” appearing frequently on ScreenMDM Factual & Formats in the last month. The business competition format 60 Day Hustle is expanding outside the U.S. for the first time, with Sonic Gods Studios partnering with Fremantle's Beach House Pictures for a Singapore-set version. BBC’s natural history format Springwatch is being remade for the first time, with Brutal Media, owned by BBC Studios, landing a commission for a local version from Basque public-service broadcaster EITB. ITV boarded Talpa Studios’ The Golden Elevators in that format’s first deal outside of its Dutch home. The House of Hide & Seek, also from Talpa, landed a commission at Spanish public broadcaster RTVE ahead of its Dutch launch. Deadliest Catch, which has run for more than 20 years on Discovery Channel, is getting a Canadian version courtesy of Rogers Sports & Media in a deal brokered by Fremantle. Meanwhile, brand-new format concepts that made their way onto commission lists last month included Wordle at NBC and an arranged-marriage-style dating show at FOX. Channel 4 is actively seeking new “bold, returnable” British unscripted formats, launching a proof-of-concept development fund. Art Sejdiu, Channel 4’s head of commissioning development, said, “Big ideas need big development, and Channel 4 wants to support the independent production sector to develop the best ideas. This fund is about giving British indies the space and backing to really kick the tires on ambitious new formats. I hope it’ll help the next wave of original British unscripted IP break through.”
Nicholas Sercombe, CEO of Harry King TV, discusses how the London and LA-based indie is finding fresh angles and betting on chemistry and production values as it rolls out Curiosity.
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