Rob Wade, president of alternative entertainment and specials of Fox Entertainment, discusses the company’s new competition format Alter Ego and its US$100m fund to help uncover international formats.

Rob Wade

Rob Wade, president of alternative entertainment and specials of Fox Entertainment, has long called for more risk-taking in the international formats market. And with an ambitious, avatar-based competition series hitting screens in the US last month – closely followed by the unveiling of a US$100m fund to find unscripted global formats – the company is putting its money where its mouth is.

Its new competition format, Alter Ego, hit the ground running when it launched on September 22, following The Masked Singer in Fox’s Wednesday night schedule. According to Fox, Alter Ego is the most-watched and highest-rated new unscripted show of the season, as well as being Fox’s most-watched new series of the season.

The show, produced by Fox’s in-house unscripted studio Fox Alternative Entertainment (FAE), has also performed well on streaming platforms, becoming Fox’s most-streamed unscripted debut in six months (since America’s Most Wanted, released in March), with 486,000 viewers streaming the premiere across Hulu and Fox NOW.

The singing competition sees contestants create digital avatars of themselves and perform songs behind a screen wearing motion-capture technology. During the performance, judges Alanis Morissette, will.i.am, Nick Lachey and Grimes can only see the avatar performing and the contestant behind the avatar is revealed afterwards.

Speaking to C21, Wade agrees it is an unusual format but insists that taking risks on out-of-the-box IP is essential – both for Fox Entertainment and the wider unscripted business – in pursuit of tomorrow’s global format hits.

“It’s pretty out there as an idea and in this day and age, particularly in the way that viewers are retreating to safe areas in unscripted, it’s really heartening to know that audiences are willing to sample something that’s different and new,” said Wade.

The immense difficulty of finding hit global formats isn’t lost on Wade, who spearheaded the US launch of the massively popular competition series The Masked Singer, which was adapted from a South Korean format and has become a ratings smash for Fox in the US and internationally.

That becomes more challenging still when designing formats designed to appeal to the entire family, says Wade, rather than the more niche offerings being programmed by global SVoD services.

Alter Ego features performances via avatars created by motion-capture technology

“[The family format] is not a model we’re seeing as much at the moment, because the streaming model is to aggregate people to the service by having different things for everybody, whereas the broadcast business is about aggregating viewers and making one thing for everyone, which is, in a way, much harder.”

At its core, Wade says Alter Ego gives contestants the ability to be the person they always dreamt of being, which he believes is a fundamental ingredient for creating successful formats. “The best formats, at their heart, have an almost fairy tale element,” he says.

One defining aspect of the format is that it spotlights contestants who “physically or mentally can’t make the stage, and yet they have great voices, which I think separates Alter Ego from others.”

Internationally, US-based distributor Propagate International is selling the format. Unveiled at Mipcom in 2019, the company has a distribution deal in place with Fox Entertainment, with Propagate selling finished tape for The Masked Singer, I Can See Your Voice and Ultimate Tag, in addition to Alter Ego.

“On the sales side, you realise that you don’t get these opportunities all the time,” said Propagate International president Cyrus Farrokh of the buzz around the format. “We’re seeing it from buyers everywhere – from Latin America, to the obvious buyers in Europe, to Asia, where I’ve got lots of clients chasing me right now.”

In multiple markets, Farrokh said he has several bidders vying for both the finished tape and format rights.

Alter Ego is one example of a new slate of global formats Fox Entertainment hopes to develop, produce and sell internationally. And in that pursuit, FAE has become a crucial component.

Formed in 2019 to oversee production on The Masked Singer, FAE has become a not-so-secret weapon in Fox’s factual armoury, both as an in-house production unit and a creator of its own IP.

In addition to the US version of The Masked Singer, which is adapted from the Korean format, FAE also produces I Can See Your Voice, The Masked Dancer, Name That Tune, Crime Scene Kitchen and Domino Masters.

Wade says the launch of FAE has been a boon for younger creators, providing them with more favourable deal terms than they might find elsewhere in the market.

The Alter Ego all-star judging panel

“It’s beneficial because it still means creators can have ownership in their ideas, which, of course, is not happening to the same degree in the streamers. It gives FAE some real separation.”

But FAE can’t carry all the responsibility of developing formats. “FAE is in a phenomenal position to create IP. I think we would be foolish not to take bets on some of the ideas that they’re coming up with. However, it’s a very hard task to come up with IP and I’ve always said there is no plan, no future and no ability to only use self-created IP,” said Wade.

That’s where the new US$100m fund comes in. Unveiled in late September, the fund was established to invest in and develop unscripted concepts originating from outside the US, with a view to finding innovative, broad-based IP.

Its launch is premised on the fact that many of television’s most enduring and popular formats were created outside the US, including The Voice (Netherlands) and The Masked Singer (South Korea). By casting its IP-finding net globally, Fox Entertainment is intent on unearthing properties that will help drive its unscripted slate for years, and perhaps decades, to come.

Another underlying reason for going out into the international marketplace is that, over two decades after the initial reality TV boom phase, finding genuinely new unscripted formats is hard.

“It’s a mature business now and a lot harder to find really unique ideas, so it’s understandable that they come along a bit less frequently. But I think they will,” he said.

With Fox preparing to take its unscripted development work to the next level, Wade believes risk-taking, experimentation and innovation are the keys to creating the factual trends of the future. For now, he is excited to hear fresh ideas from creators beyond outside the US.

“We really want to get into the global community, find those new ideas, fund them and reach creators who perhaps wouldn’t normally get the chance to pitch to us. The more risk that different people are taking around the world, the better for us,” he says.