STILL PLAYING THE GAME
Game
shows, reality and TV events look set to be the must-have genres of
MIPTV 2008. Joanna Stephens takes a sneak preview of this year’s format
hopefulsALL ENTERTAINMENT genres
go in and out of fashion — other than, apparently, that good old TV
workhorse, the game show. True, at certain times game shows are hipper
and hotter than at others; but as Karoline Spodsberg, international
director of Nordisk Film TV puts it, “broadcasters always have room for
a strong game show that can run season after season”.
Trouble is, as Spodsberg is the first to admit, such formats are about as rare as a contestant winning the Millionaire jackpot. Indeed, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?
continues to drive schedules across the major European markets and
remains the gold standard in terms of performance and longevity. “But
it takes an exceptionally strong game mechanism to be successful year
after year,” Spodsberg adds. “Recently, we haven’t seen many new game
shows performing as well as Millionaire or PokerFace in
the Nordic territories. But I don’t believe that’s because people no
longer want to watch games. I think it’s because there haven’t been any
new, strong contenders out there.” 
Nordisk Film TV’s Karoline Spodsberg:
"Broadcasters always have room
for a strong game show”
Nordisk’s response to this game-show lacuna is Zig Zag Productions’ Bias, which pits a weekly contestant against a panel representing a social group — models, say, or priests — in a profit-from-your-prejudice showdown. Spodsberg is confident that Bias has what it takes to go big internationally — and is also upbeat about French TV’s high-pressure, test-of-nerve quiz Duel, for which Nordisk has the Nordic rights. “Both Bias and Duel have some of the same game-show engines as Millionaire,” she says. “I have a strong belief in the international potential of both shows.”
Over
in Los Angeles, Chris Grant, managing director of Reveille, president
of Reveille International and a FRAPA board member, is also
contemplating game shows, which he says continue to do the business for
US audiences in general and Reveille in particular. Founded by Ben
Silverman, currently co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, Reveille was
acquired last month by the UK-based ‘super-indie’ Shine, controlled by
Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of Rupert Murdoch.
Grant’s MIPTV roster includes the new Reveille/Mark Burnett game show, My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad — which, in essence, does exactly what it says on the tin. The reality-tinged elimination format, which debuted on NBC last month, puts four father-son/father-daughter teams through a series of stunt-driven challenges, quizzes and contests.
Grant’s MIPTV roster includes the new Reveille/Mark Burnett game show, My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad — which, in essence, does exactly what it says on the tin. The reality-tinged elimination format, which debuted on NBC last month, puts four father-son/father-daughter teams through a series of stunt-driven challenges, quizzes and contests.
Reveille’s Chris Grant: “Creativity
crosses boundaries and jumps geographic lines”
crosses boundaries and jumps geographic lines”
My Dad is family-friendly, fun and physical — characteristics that it shares with another Reveille hit, the hybrid reality/game show American Gladiators,
which is also in Grant’s MIPTV bag. The relaunched, revitalised format
(the original series aired from 1989-96) was the highest rated
new-series debut when it launched on NBC in January. In the updated
version, contestants — from firefighters through Iraq vets — are cast
for their proven ability to overcome adversity and to help others. The
prize is a handy $250,000, plus the chance to become one the Gladiators.
Co-produced with MGM, American Gladiators
has now been picked up for a second season by NBC and is also being
spun out across various other platforms and products, including a
website, a US tour and a cartoon series.
Grant believes American Gladiators’ success is also a function of the US networks’ increasing openness to scheduling reality in primetime slots. “It was the same with our weight-loss show The Biggest Loser,” he says. “Everyone said, ‘Who’ll want to watch fat people on television in prime?’ But people did. And now we’re seeing the same phenomenon with Gladiators.”
As to the legacy of the LA writers’ strike, Grant says it was “further proof that the format business works, and that creativity crosses boundaries and jumps geographic lines”. But he is far from gung-ho: “The strike was bad for television,” he insists. “In the end, nobody won.”
You´ve Won!, by contrast, is UK-based Alchemy Reality’s game-show priority for MIPTV. Managing director and FRAPA board member Mike Beale runs through the mechanism: “Basically, every player starts the game having won. Our host turns up on your doorstep, and says, ‘Congratulations! You’ve won!’ And all you have to do is guess what the prize is — in just two minutes.”
Devised by the US duo Hallock Healy, You’ve Won! is just the sort of “good solid game show that people like, and go on liking”, Beale says, adding that the biggest problem confronting game-show creators in today’s cutthroat market is persuading commissioners that “clever isn’t always best”. Yet all the evidence points to the fact that one-trick, stunt game shows seldom last the course. “You’re lucky if they run to two series,” he says. “People just get bored of them.”
CBS Paramount’s Do You Trust Me?, from producer Phil Gurin (The Singing Bee; The Weakest Link), is a concept that manages to be fresh and original while avoiding Beale’s charge of too-clever-by-half. The gameplay is built entirely on trust — or lack of it. Two contestants, who are total strangers, play as a team in pursuit of up to $2m. Throughout the show, host Tucker Carlson (Crossfire) reveals surprising facts about each contestant’s life, designed to demonstrate how trustworthy the players actually are.
Distraction Formats’ Jack Of All Trades from Australia’s Brand New Media also has the hallmarks of solid performer. The game-show/reality fusion is centred on a competition to find the greatest all-round tradesman in the country. To achieve that distinction, competitors must compete with each other in a series of practical tests of their professional skills.
Jack Of All Trades is typical of many of the latest generation of game shows in that it blends the tension and resolution of a contest with the human processes that drive it. Another highly successful exponent of this approach is Reveille’s Moment Of Truth, created by Lighthearted Entertainment’s Howard Schultz (Extreme Makeover). Already sold to 23 countries, Moment Of Truth premiered on Fox in January to record ratings and an audience of over 23 million.
On one level, Moment Of Truth is a typical game show in that contestants are competing for a cash prize. But instead of testing the players’ knowledge, it awards money for brutal honesty. The result, as a New York Times’ review described it, “is a pseudo-psychological trial by ordeal in which the contestants trade candour for dollars”.
It is also, of course, compelling viewing, if not exactly feel-good. The Colombian version of the format, for example, was recently pulled after a woman confessed that she had hired a hit man to kill her husband. “Schultz has totally jumped the shark with Moment Of Truth in terms of public consciousness,” Grant says of the format that is currently captivating America. “When you’re able to pull in audiences like that at a reduced cost, you have a show that’s going to be very attractive to buyers all over the world.”
If Moment Of Truth proves anything, it is that reality is still alive, well and eminently saleable. Distraction’s slate reflects this truth — among its priority titles for MIPTV are three reality-driven shows: the scripted formats All About Me and Miss Meteo, and the primetime reality/variety hit Rock The Star.
Michel Rodrigue, president of Distraction and a FRAPA board member, is particularly optimistic about the Canadian format All About Me, which chronicles the lives of three actors and real-life friends as they struggle to make it professionally and personally. “It’s a high-concept scripted comedy that fits in very well with our previous successes in this area, such as Serial Frank, The Invincibles, Love Bugs and Lady Kracher,” Rodrigue says.
Alchemy’s contribution to this year’s reality crop is Outland, a gruelling 30-day survival challenge, in which the success of the group, rather than the individual, is the goal. “It’s the reality version of Lost,” is how Beale describes it. “And it’s also different in that it’s the opposite of an elimination game. So to win money, you have to increase the number of people in the show rather than lose them.”
Alchemy Reality’s Mike Beale: “Clever isn’t always best”
Beale observes that there has been a slowdown in outward bound-type shows over the past couple of years. “I’ve got a feeling that action-adventure reality might be on the rebound,” he says. “Everybody’s been pitching studio-based games and quiz shows in recent years. So I’m hoping I’ll get somewhere by running in the opposite direction.”
The latest reality offering from Shine’s factual arm, Firefly, may not be outdoorsy but it’s certainly out of the ordinary. Called The Family and due to launch on the UK’s Channel 4 this autumn, Grant says he was “absolutely riveted” by his first glimpse of the show’s rough footage. The concept is not, in itself, genre-busting — it is essentially a Truman Show-esque examination of the life of a ‘normal’ UK family — but the execution is both ambitious and distinctive. And the result, according to Grant, is a truly “extraordinary television experience”.
“The family’s home has been turned into a studio, with 24 cameras filming around the clock,” Grant says. “They’re aware they are being filmed, but they’re not miked up and they’re not being told what to do. It took a year to find the right family and four months to shoot.”
Grant believes that The Family, which borrows from a simpler TV age in terms of its classic obs-doc narrative, is indicative of the way in which reality TV is headed, particularly in the UK. “Audiences are no longer responding well to shows filled with mechanisms,” he says. “They don’t want to be tricked on manipulated by producers.” They want, in other words, their reality shows to give them ‘real’ reality rather than a stage-managed version of it.
The other thing audiences want, of course, is to be entertained — which is why Nordisk’s Spodsberg reckons she is on to a winner with Melody Challenge, a big, brash, event-driven talent show that centres on a nation-wide search for the best song. “It has a very strong track record and is really something that broadcasters can use to gather audience around them,” she says. “And that’s really what broadcasters are looking for in today’s TV universe: big primetime shows that can strengthen their brand, entertain the whole family and gather the nation together.”
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We would again like to invite you to make use of the Newsletter as a platform for your news and views. We are also happy to publish announcements on behalf of our members.
Lastly, if you would like to contact another FRAPA member, please give us a call or send us an e-mail. We will be delighted to help.
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