The boom started here and can continue if policymakers tread carefully, says Jean Chalaby

who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire

Few trends have had as much impact on television as formats in recent years. The format revolution that came with the new millennium suddenly transformed a small commerce into a global business.

Today, hundreds of programmes are adapted across the world at any one time. In the process, the business has become a fully fledged trading system underpinned by a global value chain that links hundreds of interdependent media firms across borders.

The BBC signed the first format contract - reluctantly - in June 1951 for CBS’s What’s My Line, and the format trade remained dominated by US gameshows for the ensuing decades. The UK, however, was the birthplace of the format revolution, pioneered by the likes of Bazal’s Ready Steady Cook and Mentorn, Barraclough & Carey’s Robot Wars. The gamechanger was, of course, Celador’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, which demonstrated the potential of the format.

The British success in the format trade can be explained by several factors: the UK is the world’s second programming market, its broadcasting ecology is designed so that competition encourages innovation and does not prohibit risk-taking, and British broadcasters’ commissioning practices are more sophisticated than in most other markets.

The key to this performance is also the independent firms that specialise in IP creation and production, and the unique IP regime that protects them: the terms of trade have given these firms more control over their IP and encouraged them to exploit it on the world market.

Global competition is undoubtedly heating up, but the truth is it will be a challenge for most countries to elevate themselves to the level of tier-one exporters such as the UK, the US or the Netherlands.

So the UK remains in a good position to generate future hits, as long as policymakers think through the impact of their decisions on the performance of British firms in the global TV format value chain.

  • Jean Chalaby is professor of international communication at City University, London (j.chalaby@ city.ac.uk). His latest book, The Format Age, is now available from Polity and will be launched on 26 November at City University

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