Samuel Kissous, founder of Paris indie prodco Pernel Media, tells Clive Whittingham about France’s thirst for formats, its growing exports and taking risks.

As a former commissioning editor at French broadcaster M6, Samuel Kissous saw the potential of imported formats first-hand when he was involved in local versions of Come Dine With Me, The Bachelor and Jamie’s Kitchen, among others.

When a slew of new DTT channels readied themselves for launch, all hungry for ideas that had succeeded in other markets, he branched out with his own prodco to take advantage.

Paris-based Pernel Media launched in 2009, struck a deal with All3Media to produce its formats in France and quickly got Cash Cab off the ground with M6’s little sister channel W9, and Dinner Date with Canal+ DTT network D8.

“If something has good ratings in other major countries, that limits the risk of it failing in your own market. That’s the way the industry works, there’s nothing new in that,” Kissous says. “What is particular about France is that there have been lots of DTT channels launched. That was very beneficial for us because we worked with a lot of them before we started working with bigger channels. It was a good training ground.

“What’s happening now is those DTT channels are not that small anymore; they’re getting bigger. We’re seeing famous shows with established brands that have succeeded on big broadcasters in France already coming back on the smaller DTT channels. It’s striking to see a show like Nouvelle Star [Idol], which was a big primetime success on M6, is now a big primetime success on D8.”

The failure of much-publicised singing format Rising Star to make an impact on M6 – the channel brought it to an early close due to poor ratings – won’t stop broadcasters turning to international formats or shiny-floor shows, according to Kissous.

“Rising Star didn’t work but The Voice is still very strong,” he points out. “You can never be sure. When Rising Star launched in France it had already failed in other countries. Everybody was nervous about it anyway and people knew that it wasn’t such an established format.

“Because of the new competition between bigger and smaller broadcasters in France, there are more formats coming to our market all the time. Channels are trying a lot of new shows, or sometimes old shows that have never been worked on before in France. Hell’s Kitchen has just been commissioned by NT1 and M6 also tried Saturday Night Takeaway.”

But what about creating some original French ideas for export? Kissous says this is difficult, but he believes his company’s strategy of working on lightly formatted factual series could be a key to building Pernel’s international arm rather than simply adapting other people’s ideas for the local market.

National Geographic Channels International commissioned the company to make a second season of Four Babies a Second, which looks at the varied cultures and maternity facilities faced by new mothers around the world. It is also working on culinary series Baking Good, Baking Bad for Fox International Channels. And access has also been secured to the prestigious hotel Park Hyatt Paris Vendôme for a fly-on-the-wall documentary.

“It’s very difficult to come up with an original French format. It’s triggered us to do a lot of international factual series that are slightly formatted and we can sell around the world as finished programmes,” he explains.

Kissous also says the risk-averse commissioning culture that fuels the market for formats, and potentially denies new ideas the chance to push through, is creating a situation where new funding models are being found for innovative factual series.

“There’s now a chicken-and-egg situation, where broadcasters want to see shows before buying them, distributors need content to be distributed, producers need to make shows and everybody is waiting for each other to commit,” he says. “The worldwide trend is that broadcasters are taking fewer risks, so distributors and producers have to work together to find creative solutions to make things happen.

“When you have distributors actively looking for new projects you see a lot of new financial models being sorted out, co-financing models where the distributor takes more risks.”

So there may be hope of a new breakout factual hit coming soon after all, but with the distributor, not the broadcaster, in the hole if it flops.