How are the perennially popular TV genres of travel and adventure being influenced by streamers’ love of competition formats and the plethora of YouTube channels offering high-octane thrills?

Whether it’s attempting to walk across England in a straight line, stealth camping overnight in the middle of a mini-roundabout or getting drunk with Lithuania’s ‘most notorious’ gangster, the Wild West that is YouTube offers plenty of novel twists on the travel and adventure genre.

Other examples, such as MrBeast’s week spent stranded on an island are more clearly indebted to tried and tested TV formats such as Survivor or Alone, highlighting the increasingly blurred line between the two mediums, a trend accelerated by the fact so many of us are now watching YouTube on our televisions.

A year ago, C21 explored the societal changes influencing TV travel shows, with more environmentally friendly ways of seeing the world being encouraged and diverse presenting talent getting some overdue screen time.

More recently, we looked at how adventure reality formats from yesteryear have been dusted down and new ones launched to tap into a red-hot unscripted action-adventure genre that remains hugely popular.

Mid-way through 2024 and it’s now clear the latter trend is having a major influence on travel shows, with some of the most popular recent examples in the genre incorporating competition elements while diversifying the on-screen talent fronting the shows.

For Patrick Holland, CEO of the UK arm of Banijay, the world’s biggest independent producer and distributor, competition is becoming increasingly important to any unscripted show, given the need to hook viewers in and keep them coming back for more in an on-demand streaming environment.

This means the kinds of shows he once commissioned for an evening slot on linear TV during his time as controller of BBC Two face an uncertain future as commissioners focus more on reality competition shows over traditional series such as travelogues.

“The challenge with streaming is you need people to watch multiple episodes, otherwise there isn’t that follow through. If you’re making a series with eight episodes, you want people to watch all eight. With series with closed episodes, you turn up, watch one episode of a show at 20.00 and you don’t have to come back to it,” said Holland at a recent roundtable interview organised by the Broadcasting Press Guild.

By extension, this means producers must work harder to develop unscripted formats with cliff-hanger endings to episodes akin to those seen in high-end TV dramas that work so well in a streaming ecosystem.

Series that tap into this trend include 007: Road to a Million on Amazon’s Prime Video or Bear Hunt, the forthcoming Netflix reality competition series fronted by British survival expert, adventurer and television presenter Bear Grylls, produced by Grylls’s The Natural Studios, Banijay UK’s Workerbee and Talkback.

No one arguably does competition better than MrBeast, however, and the YouTube mega star is set to usher in a new era for the adventure genre with his forthcoming US reality competition series offering a cash prize of US$5m on Prime Video.

One of the most popular recent examples, however, is Race Across the World, a show Holland commissioned during his time at BBC Two and produced by Studio Lambert after the All3Media-owned firm was asked to develop an adventure show featuring couples.

“They started discussing whether a couple could get to travel right to the other side of the world without flying, for the price of airfare. The BBC liked the concept and asked Studio Lambert to look into a route and it went from there,” says Nick Smith, executive VP of formats at the show’s distributor All3Media International.

Smith acknowledges travel shows have been a “mainstay” of TV for many years, but Race Across the World, a show in which contestants travel without bank cards, mobile phones or internet access, “feels very different.”

“While we’re used to having a celebrity or presenter show viewers around a destination, in Race Across the World we become part of someone’s adventure. Audiences are experiencing something fresh and original, as they discover a place through the eyes of the contestants,” says Smith.

“Although it’s a race, it’s lightly formatted. The contestants are not given challenges for our entertainment; they are given minimal instructions and get to make their own decisions. As a result, they forget they are part of a TV show, which is impossible in more heavily formatted shows.

“Casting is always key. Race Across the World doesn’t feature typical reality casting with larger-than-life personalities because the format doesn’t need that. The pairs have interesting backstories and a reason for traveling together, which is often as beneficial to the audience as it is to themselves,” adds Smith.

The exec points to contestant Betty Mukherjee, who was praised after she shared her diagnosis of Mayer Rokitansky Küster Hauser syndrome (MRKH) in the latest season of the programme, its fourth on the BBC.

So far, the format has been adapted in Finland and the Netherlands, with the most popular version airing on TV2 in Denmark, while ZDF in Germany has commissioned a version and more European territories are set to be announced. Smith says All3Media is keen to take the format to Asia, with an Indian version a particular target.

Peta Sykes, VP of Nordics at All3Media International, says extreme care is taken to ensure Race Across the World portrays different cultures respectfully and accurately while contestants rely on the generosity of locals for transportation, shelter and food.

“One of the reasons Race Across the World has such impressive appeal is that it functions as a travelogue, history lesson and cultural exploration. Contestants frequently stay in locals’ homes, experiencing their daily lives first-hand. They also take on local jobs, gaining further insight into the culture, and we see genuine engagement with local communities.

“Viewers witness the authentic day-to-day lives of the people featured. The mutual respect between contestants and locals is evident, as locals often express support for the contestants, despite them being strangers. Through these interactions, the show enlightens contestants, and as a result viewers, about the diverse cultures and communities they encounter,” says Sykes.

Authenticity is a key part of the appeal of YouTube, the content spend of which may go under the radar for most in the TV business but now ranks as the second largest non-sports content spend globally in 2024, behind Disney, according to Ampere Analysis.

Whether a semi-inebriated man from the north of England stealth camping in the middle of a mini-roundabout in the rain for his YouTube channel Blot Outdoors Show will ever make the jump to a more mainstream platform like BBC iPlayer remains to be seen, but the lines are becoming increasingly blurred.

One format hoping to make such a leap is 7 vs Wild, which follows seven teams of content creators and influencers surviving in the wilderness with just seven basic items.

Hosted by Hamburg-based CaliVision Network on YouTube, the property has been sold by Germany’s Quintus Studios to Amazon-owned Freevee, which has brought the show to its free, ad-supported streaming television service on connected TVs around Germany.

Anouk van Dijk, Quintus Studios’ Amsterdam-based head of sales and coproductions, has been in talks with local European players and international streaming companies about the format, the first two seasons of which were filmed in Sweden and Panama and attracted 200 million views on YouTube.

“Broadcasters are all looking for younger audiences and the talent on these programmes has a huge young following. The data can show that, which is valuable information for the broadcasters. The more traditional travel content is not as global. Very often it’s hosted by someone known in one specific country, so it’s hard to have a global audience for it,” says van Dijk.

Quintus Studios also runs its own YouTube channels, hosting a mix of acquired library programming from US cable networks alongside original productions. Flagship channel Free Documentary and spin-off FD Adventure, for example, features content such as Most Dangerous Roads, The Mountain Man: Surviving Alone in the Rockies and Dropped.

“Survival content is exciting. People love to watch from their couch content that is thrilling and maybe a little bit dangerous without having to do it. Internally we sometimes call it danger porn,” says van Dijk.

“People want to travel and see the world, but there’s an extra feeling that comes when you go into the wild on your own, make a fire and get your own food. It’s a connection with nature without having to go through the downsides.”

Joe Weinstock, CEO of Argonon-owned Rose Rock Entertainment and CEO of Argonon USA, believes creatives working in TV ignore the ways social media platforms are influencing content “at their peril across any genre.”

“Content creators have huge and loyal digital audiences and are already disrupting the shape and future of the global travel sector, driven by the media consumption of millennials and Gen Z audiences. Influencers are talent and their platforms offer an immediate snapshot of social and cultural trends. In developing large scale ideas to appeal to a broad audience, this will always factor heavily in development,” says Weinstock.

The exec, whose prodco was founded in 2022 and is behind shows such as River of No Return (Discovery), has also observed how commissioners Stateside are seeking more competition elements in their formats.

“Competition has always been a factor in the adventure genre, from The Amazing Race to I’m a Celeb. We’ve recently seen an uptick in interest from commissioners and are developing an exciting format in this space, more news on that soon,” says Weinstock.

“The competition element offers intrigue and engagement, as well as broadening the appeal to a wider audience and offering bingeability in an on-demand world. That said, we are always developing in this genre with this question to guide direction and resources: Can you see the show on a billboard and know immediately what it is?

“In travel, as across all areas, genres are bleeding into genres and hybrid ideas with great talent and characters are coming to the forefront,” adds the exec.

Hannah Wyatt, MD, factual entertainment and events at scripted and unscripted giant BBC Studios, travel may be a “perennial” subject with broad appeal, but producers must keep tabs on ways it is evolving.

“As an industry we have to respond to a new generation coming through, but also the changing fashions and issues around travel in terms of the economy, the pandemic and climate change. All those things influence how we as producers think about programmes,” says Wyatt, who oversees a slate that includes Paddy & Chris: Road Trippin’ (working title) and Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby.

“There is still a place for the celebrity travelogue. But when you look at successful travel shows now, they’re not just about travel or just about adventure. The most successful shows need to offer the viewer something more by asking a question or responding to something specific, or adding in competition elements or looking at the more extreme version of things,” says Wyatt.

Meanwhile, influencers such as Nadine Sykora, who claims to be one of the top travel vloggers on YouTube, has usurped the role previously performed by BBC series such as The Travel Show by offering travel hacks on social media.

“Of course, YouTube influences us as producers, because you’re looking at what the talent is doing and what the audience is responding to. But that still leaves room for shows like Amazing Hotels or the Paddy and Chris travelogue. They all offer a range of different things,” says Wyatt.

“People are often looking for tips and tricks from social media, whereas they’re getting a different sort of narrative journey with a celebrity in longer form content.”

Wyatt also believes most people’s viewing habits are diverse and multi-platform, not just young people, pointing to her husband’s love of One Life Truck It on Instagram, in which Bobby and Marie Bolton drive from UK to Australia with two dogs in tow.

“We’re all used to having different forms of content. Of course, we look at people who are doing things on social media and how they could either transfer over or become part of something. It’s not as easy as people think sometimes. Historically, it’s been hard to bring social media stars onto long form. I’m really, really interested to see how MrBeast transfers over from YouTube to Amazon,” says Wyatt.

“We look to social media for inspiration when we’re thinking about new ideas, but we think about everything that’s going on in the zeitgeist because that’s how you keep these shows fresh and how you come up with the new twist.”

How are the perennially popular TV genres of travel and adventure being influenced by streamers’ love of competition formats and the plethora of YouTube channels offering high-octane thrills?

Whether it’s attempting to walk across England in a straight line, stealth camping overnight in the middle of a mini-roundabout or getting drunk with Lithuania’s ‘most notorious’ gangster, the Wild West that is YouTube offers plenty of novel twists on the travel and adventure genre.

Other examples, such as MrBeast’s week spent stranded on an island are more clearly indebted to tried and tested TV formats such as Survivor or Alone, highlighting the increasingly blurred line between the two mediums, a trend accelerated by the fact so many of us are now watching YouTube on our televisions.
READ MORE