ITVS: at the top of the formats game

With a proven track record in creating format hits across the world, including The Voice, Love Island, Come Dine With Me, Hell’s Kitchen, I’m A Celebrity… and The Chase, it seems ITV Studios has the winning formula. However, defining what makes a hit format is like capturing lightning in a bottle. No one knows for sure what will succeed, but when one does break through, you seize the moment and run with it.

But once mega-brands swamp the schedules – either sticking around for years or making a comeback after a period of being rested, safe in the knowledge that viewers already know the IP – how does the next generation of shows fight for space?

“I think everybody’s waiting for that huge show that’s going to become a smash from the outset,” says Mike Beale, ITV Studios’ managing director, global creative & production support.

“I’m not sure that has happened in quite a while – it’s getting harder to get ideas on air and to make them a success. Once, you might have got an idea on air in six months, but now, with big-scale shows, it’s 12 or 18 months, sometimes even longer, and then potentially taking two or three seasons to bed in and build.”

Spotting potential

Now that The Traitors is the envy of the industry, it’s easy to forget that it had run for two series in the Netherlands before becoming a BBC word-of-mouth hit, while The Masked Singer ran for four years in South Korea and Thailand before its successful US launch. Then ITV in the UK took a punt on what initially seemed a bizarre format.

A string of emerging ITVS formats are starting to generate international buzz – but it’s not always the territories that launched those shows that will come to define them.

Take My Mum, Your Dad, coming to ITV next month with Davina McCall at the helm. Following the journeys of single parents looking for their second chance at love, versions are also lined up in France and Germany. The format comes from “good stock”, created by US comedy king Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Recreation) and his daughter Haley, for HBO Max.

ITVS Australia and Nine saw its potential even before the US version aired – and ran with it. “The global success is burgeoning from the Australian version, which is already in its second series” says Beale.

Similarly, while ITV2’s Ready To Mingle didn’t become a breakout hit for the channel in 2021, it’s finding new life in other territories, having been rebranded Make Love, Fake Love, with Germany adding a celebrity protagonist twist.

“Dating was working really well in Germany and this idea spoke to them,” says Beale. “Being part of a big group, you see the lifecycle of a show’s development. The German team were across Ready To Mingle from its inception as an original idea that subverted The Bachelor and Love Island, and loved it from that first moment.”

And, he says, having a second stab at a show affords the opportunity to look again at the format. “Maybe episode one was a bit slow or the casting was slightly off, or it wasn’t marketed well. Whatever the accumulated reasons, if you love the underlying idea, and you have proof of concept, you can go in and pitch ‘This is how we would do it’,” Beale says.

“The US, UK and Australia are as much shop windows as creation centres”
Mike Beale, MD, global creative &production support, ITV Studios

While ideas can, in theory, come from anywhere, a format still needs a presence in the US, UK and Australia to feel like it has legs. “These territories are as much shop windows as they are creation centres,” says Beale. “Once a format’s in more than one of those, it definitely gains momentum, but none of those territories on their own can really deliver that.”

Beale has his eye on translating the Israeli format Game Of Chefs for these markets. “It’s quietly sat in Romania for years, and has also aired in Greece, Hungary and Germany, but not yet in the UK – it’s never quite made it to the mainstream.”

Waiting in the wings is a new collection of challengers to the formats throne: ITV2’s Loaded In Paradise, Channel 4’s Scared Of The Dark, and BBC3’s talent search Project Icon and gay dating show I Kissed A Boy. Of these, Loaded In Paradise and I Kissed A Boy, both produced by Twofour, are returning, the latter with a gender switch.

Warm tone

These shows share a warmth of tone, which Beale attributes partly to responding to what viewers’ wanted as they emerged from the pandemic, as well as a slight audience shift to a diverse and more relatable cast. Nevertheless, shows such as Tempting Fortune and The Traitors have demonstrated that viewers will accept elements of meanness if it’s in the control of the contestant and as part of survival game-play. “You can have a level of conflict if it’s handled properly or reflective of human nature and real life, rather than the producer being mean for means sake,” Beale says.

“Having a second series is useful to continue the development of an idea – in series two of Loaded In Paradise, we are looking at casting and the show will also be ‘sped up’. The audience told us we didn’t get to the action soon enough, that they love the format, but took two or three episodes to get there. It’s great to have that second chance to be able to fix those holes.”

Authenticity of presenters helps, too: Dannii Minogue’s hosting of I Kissed A Boy has been universally acclaimed.

“BBC3 wanted an icon from the gay world, and Dannii got it from pretty much the first conversation and was excited and engaged,” says Beale.

Equally, as a global superstar, host and creator Jason Derulo will be crucial to selling Project Icon, particularly with his record label attached, but it could live elsewhere, without him on screen.

Of course, not every market can try things out on a PSB channel, so having this proof of concept will surely help ITVS push Project Icon hard at Content London and Mipcom later this year. “We have to find territories that are looking for a new way to turn the dial on talent searches, and find those slots for what is essentially a smaller-scale show, but one where you could make the winner a huge hit in the music world,” says Beale.

Other new shows performing well – such as ITVS titles Puzzling (Channel 5) and Popmaster (More4) – would, he concedes, need upscaling to make it onto mainstream channels in other territories. “We’re hearing more of a requirement now, especially if you’re selling a format on to a free-to-air channel, for it to work on both linear and whichever streaming service it’s on. You might get one or the other, but it’s rare to get both.”

In the past 18 months, ITVS has ventured into third-party formats too, such as Alone, the survival hit created by ITVS US label Leftfield Pictures for the History Channel, which has since been made in Australia and launched earlier this month on Channel 4 in the UK.

“We’re a vertically integrated producer/ broadcaster but we can’t possibly create every hit,” says Beale. “History owner AETN controls Alone, so it’s essentially a third-party show that we can share across our territories.”

Meanwhile, the juggernauts still need to be refreshed and international reps of each key brand will present format tweaks and spin-off ideas at regular catch-up meetings of ITVS’s global teams. Examples of this include Love Island Games (airing later this year in the US), Come Dine With Me: The Professionals and The Voice Generations.

Opportunities to take these brands beyond the TV screen are always explored, resulting in brand extensions like Minecraft Come Mine With Me or The Voice Metaverse, Love Island merchandise and Hell’s Kitchen restaurants. It’s a constantly evolving challenge.