Formatland 101: A very British explanation of our international industry

By Siobhan Crawford 01-09-2025

C21’s formats columnist dissects some of the big unscripted talking points from the Edinburgh TV Festival and believes some UK broadcasters may be missing a trick taking a protectionist stance against international formats.

Where to start, you beautiful people. It has been summer and now a new glorious season is upon us in Formatland: Mipcom! But while we are all still getting up to speed with our inboxes and Mip diaries, we are going back to the 101: why we are in Formatland.

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People moan a lot at the Edinburgh TV Festival, but I think they also seriously miss the point of our industry while they are waving their protectionist flags. I read an article where apparently Channel 4 is proudly buying original UK format ideas, in comparison with competitors BBC and ITV who go for ‘lower-risk foreign formats.’

The British find the ‘us and them’ mindset of ‘British vs Foreign’ formats so important, as if it can fix the economy if they support UK ideas only. Surely the only difference between a UK and a ‘foreign’ format commission is who gets the credit for taking the decision and where the international revenues go. As the Terms of Trade are set, Channel 4 really only gets anything meaningful when it goes through the Format Fund. More often recently, a UK broadcaster cannot fully fund a budget either, so it is deficit-financed by pre-sales and distribution advances (i.e. foreign money) …so it might be nice to say you are being super British but the reality is quite different.

I feel like we have to go back to Formats 101 when you read things like this: we are in an eco-system of international television. We have the literal world of television at our fingertips, which means that we can buy the best of the best in dramas, documentaries and formats. Of thousands of formats created each year the best get commissioned (the excellent get rebooted) and the very best get to travel because someone has nailed the broad international appeal. How lucky are we to have so much choice.

How much does a foreign format cost to produce compared with a UK idea? Well frankly, that depends on the generosity of the broadcasters’ development budgets (rubbish), but foreign formats can be cheaper, the same or more expensive. But supposedly they reduce the risk by being worked over in every which way in another country first (however please don’t expect The Floor to be cheap just because 20 countries went first!)

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The second point – and I think the BBC and ITV are commendable for joining in the community – is why can’t we just celebrate ‘buying originals’? Any original formats starting from paper, from any territory, surely we celebrate. But fundamentally, we also need to celebrate the honest trading of these formats as protected IP.

Do we Europeans complain when we buy too many Dutch formats? No. We shout proudly. A good original idea is a good original idea, why should it have to start in your country?

Remember, six years ago we started talking about Formatland and I asked if developers and creators are actually paying attention to what IP already exists in the market because we keep diluting the offerings by creating similar concepts, rather than co-developing or buying formats.

It is possible to acquire a format and say, ‘I will make material changes and we can share in the IP for the new version’ (I said ‘material’ here folks, like substantial, so put your hands away!). So, if we talk about the forthcoming new UK launches, from a Formatland archives perspective: Tom P, I think you have that format about bringing together people with completely opposing ideologies, oh and CBS I think you had that show about The Will (short-lived) and Disney/Hulu, do you have that new (also salacious) Virgin programme? Talpa, where is it you chase people again? And didn’t you try and start a community in an abandoned field?

Buy originals. Celebrate them but ‘buy, don’t borrow’ is rule number two. We love reboots. Hungry Bear gave us back Gladiators and my child will forever be thankful for it. We have to protect what exists and adapt, we cannot keep inventing extremely familiar ideas with slight differences but laud our ‘original commissioning’ over the market. And this is a global problem.

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The format industry does not believe in equality, it believes in risk that can be mitigated by buying tested formats, but also by buying from trusted sources. This makes the pool of companies producing very small. Stephen Lambert addressed it squarely at Edinburgh: there are not enough companies trusted to produce big entertainment formats in the UK, and frankly this is a global problem.

It is the reason so many companies who acquire options cannot sell them or have to coproduce with bigger companies and take lesser roles in order to get a commission. But it is another ‘thing’ Channel 4 could have been focusing on instead as a celebration – ‘we opened up the industry, we support the younger ones or up-and-comers’ – in the same way the Nordic public broadcasters have quotas for working with indies, spreading the love. That people like Double Act came from nowhere and now can produce formats is a miracle. Celebrate that. When Can’t Stop Media can move The Assembly from one broadcaster to another and get a recommission of a French format. Celebrate that.

If we are only going to give format commissions to Studio Lambert, Endemol, Hungry Bear, Tuesdays Child, South Shore or Two Four then, actually, your problems are so much bigger than buying foreign formats – it’s the 50% unemployed freelancers, because you don’t give any other companies a look-in because you are ‘mitigating risk.’ It is all perspective, but the joy of international television is that good ideas come from many different places. Imagine ‘We gave four indies their big break and they put their heart and soul into the production.’ What a headline.

One final thought for you: what do these foreign-format-phobic Brits listen to on their Spotify? Is it all Oasis and The Kooks? What life is it without Aya Nakamura or J Balvin?! When you can’t watch Colin from Accounts or The Empress on streaming. Is it all Location Location Location and Grand Designs from 2013?

Come join us ‘internationals’ at Mipcom – we literally have the world at our fingertips.