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Content chief Lucas Green gives the big picture at Banijay

Clive Whittingham

Clive Whittingham

14-03-2022
© C21Media

Lucas Green, global head of content operations at Banijay, discusses the company’s formats slate, the position of the UK in format exports, hot new territories and how threats to its pubcasters could change the country’s position as a format research and development centre.

Lucas Green

What’s new on your slate?
The good news, and a good sign for the UK market, is two of our big new titles are from the UK. Limitless Win absolutely smashed it out of the park on the 16-34 numbers for ITV and was their biggest new launch since The Masked Singer. It’s a big, scaled-up production and an opportunity for clients to go for a tentpole show with a bold but simple premise. We’ve also got Starstruck, which airs in the same slot on ITV now Limitless Win has finished its first run. This is produced by Remarkable. It’s very different and much more in the singing, performing and talent space, but also a super-clear premise with three different singers creating teams to pay tribute to their idols. Performance and singing shows are always in high demand and this one is pre-recorded so can be filmed in blocks and doesn’t need to be live.

Any particular industry trends coming out of the pandemic that you’re looking to tap into?
We are absolutely still seeing escapism. There are lots of formats launching and coming back based on islands – sunshine and survival with a small ‘s’. People are still struggling to go on holiday even with relaxed restrictions, so shows that feed escapism, sunshine, aspiration are killing it.

Alongside that, there is a lot of competition involving crafts, skills and things people have been doing at home as a positive way to spend time in the pandemic. We’ve got Extraordinary Portraits on our slate, and MasterChef and its various spin-offs of course. Cooking, craft, makeovers – like Interior Design Masters from DSP which is switching to BBC One for a third season – competitions, craft, escapism are all key themes.

Have UK format exports been affected by the pandemic?
I’d argue that the streamers had more impact than the pandemic. A lot of them are looking for titles that are new and can take in multiple territories. Picking off individual territories one by one, looking at what works in the UK and then trying it elsewhere, is less front-of-mind for somebody like Netflix.

It might be a sweet spot for other streamers, however, whether it be Amazon, HBO Max or Discovery+ we’ve seen they are happy to do individual territory deals, which is good for the UK formats business. But those streamers that are looking to do massive global, exclusive deals represent a shift in the exports industry that has accelerated more change than the pandemic.

Remarkable’s talent show format Starstruck

The export report for the last year from UK producers’ body Pact showed UK format exports were down 29%, which felt like a lot. Will that rebound?
It might be a volume question. I think we’ll see fewer, bigger, better. Big shows that do well will continue to be robust. Look at the blockbusters in the Banijay catalogue: MasterChef was adapted in 33 countries last year; Survivor, a British-born format, was adapted in 21; Hunted is one of our fastest-growing streamer productions; and Lego Masters was one of the fastest growing shows in the world last year with 18 territories. Those big formats are absolutely bouncing back and doing well.

One trend we did get from the pandemic was a reduction in risk. All networks had to be careful about where they spent their money, there was so much uncertainty around, and although we did see a lot of new formats launch, mainly it was a doubling down on existing orders. What 2021 reflected was fewer risks being taken and new shows entering the market. That appetite for risk has now gone back up – Channel 4 wants to get its creative renewal back on track and to challenge the privatisation threat by showing it is a place for creative risk and a generation of new shows.

Whether it goes back to the glory days of the noughties where Who Wants to be a Millionaire? went to 125 countries I’m not sure, because the world has changed. The advent of streamers has shifted the measurement of success in format travel. It might be that a massive deal for Celebrity Hunted, where it’s a much better funded global option for a show, is a better yardstick for success than doing lots of small deals in lower-budget territories.

What do formats look like on streamers?

They are not particularly different to linear. You look at the massive success of The Masked Singer – it’s pre-recorded and doesn’t have a live vote. The second-screen experience we used to have was picking up the phone to vote, now that experience is going on social media to see what everybody is saying. The democratisation of these shows is what people are saying online and what their friends are saying on WhatsApp rather than what a public phone vote looks like. That isn’t a nuance that will hurt the streamers. We will see, at some point, streamers do live broadcasts and look at different ways to be interactive. We think they will experiment with that.

Originally their first big foray into unscripted formats was in dating – Love Is Blind, Too Hot To Handle. They are trying more of those and really expanding the breadth of their reality offering. They also now recognise reality is more than just dating. There are competitive reality shows, food reality shows – we’ll probably see business reality shows, gamification.

They haven’t quite cracked gameshows yet. It’s about the story arc and they’ve got to figure out what works for them in gameshows and competition shows which deliver the right metrics for them, i.e. how long you stay on the platform, how many binge multiple episodes, the ability to market the shows and come up with a great campaign to get behind and use talent to bring in new subscribers.

How would the privatisation of Channel 4, and/or the reduction in the BBC’s content budget affect the UK’s role in format creation?
They will continue to take risks, and they need to because it’s their big USP. Producers really appreciate them creating this unique, fertile, creative environment in the UK with their terms of trade and it would be a real shame and a tragedy if the BBC and Channel 4 as we know it weren’t there to take risks on new formats.

Banijay format Survivor has been adapted in 21 countries

We’re all aware of how much revenue it brings into the UK in terms of exports. They will double down on it to prove that’s how they can contribute to a diverse and healthy broadcast industry. Let’s hope producers are able to meet that challenge and come up with hits that keep them commercially viable and popular. It’s down to us as much as broadcasters to come up with brilliant shows that viewers will come to. Hopefully, that will retain a healthy marketplace.

What’s the biggest challenge facing you at the moment?
The challenge we all face when we’re producing these shows, usually in the summer, is how we tackle the talent shortage. A lot of people left the TV industry in the pandemic and there is now a shortage of great editors, shortage of great line producers. We all know it gets very busy in the summer when we’re all trying to film outdoors, anybody who has tried to hire a good line producer in the last couple of years will know it’s incredibly tough out there and we have to support freelancers better to keep them in the industry and have more training programmes.

That’s a big thing for Banijay this year – look at some of the training programmes we’ve launched in UK, Italy, Australia and replicate those, because we need more skilled technical members of staff to sustain production. If we are to deliver for linear broadcasters or streamers from LA we need great people to produce great formats.

What’s the short-term solution for this summer?
We’re in a privileged position at Banijay in the UK where we have a lot of prodcos and we use our scale and back-office connections to support different productions in busy periods. We can share resources and contacts and we have to be there for each other. You might be able to provide a longer contract for a key member of staff because we know there are productions in the wider group they can move on to. [We have a] UK-wide infrastructure to support them. Also, working with small indies. We did it with 2LE, a small indie who produced a great show for C4 called Language of Love and we helped them out with skills, coproduction and cashflowing the production to allow them to tackle the crew crunch.