The one where we realised we all grew up

By Siobhan Crawford 24-11-2025

C21’s resident formats expert reflects on the ways in which the industry and format adaptation success are judged have changed over the decades.

I got some heat from my last column when I said no one single format swept the market off its feet in Cannes. The thing is… we changed. The market changed.

The reality in 2025 is that success is reaching 30 format adaptions through slow and steady growth and not one big bang that falls apart. Are we getting old? Maybe.

I was recently speaking with a German industry friend who I had not seen in a couple years. We did that thing where we said, “Ah, you don’t change,” but actually how we do things in our industry has – and no, no one is talking about AI!

Late 2000s
I was working at Zeal and we had The Singing Bee from Gurin Co. We were in the early golden years of formats. We were sending DVDs we burnt in-house (and paying excess baggage to get them home from Cannes), we were launching shows at Mip and there were only about four different markets a year to attend.

The contracts were simple; ancillary revenue was mostly still generated by phone call-ins. Not everything was considered a format at this time. Formats were special. We did not really have reboots, those shows were still on their first cycle round the sun.

Our revenues were almost exclusively from linear broadcasters but also tape sales of formats, now that was a business too. Of course, we had to ship the tapes and still pay for conversion from PAL to NTSC or the reverse.

It was fax, email or phone calls that made sales. We could sell a format into multiple countries but news announcements were different – we heard about them at a market, the flow of announcements was much slower. We had friends in different countries that told us to watch something unmissable from their local market and sent a DVD. There were no ‘Montoya’ moments in 2007.

Big Brother was broadcasting 24/7 everywhere. Remember we were almost a decade on from the launch of this mega format and we had formats like The Mole make their appearance in 1999 too. The Dutch format factory was well and truly open and pumping them out (some slightly too controversial, like The Donor).

These were the years we were in love with factual entertainment big style. The Farm, Beauty & the Geek, Top Model, Project Runway, Supernanny, Bratcamp (I feel like I am naming a lot of Banijay formats). Deal or No Deal and Millionaire were the gameshows of choice. Strictly Come Dancing and I’m a Celeb were travelling, The X Factor was still fun and Got Talent launched, but things travelled slower into a handful of territories.

Let’s remember social media and LinkedIn were not a thing. You needed the Mip book to know email addresses or phone numbers for the switchboard – not even mobile numbers!

The middle bit
After this 1999-2007/8 period we were a little sceptical that any more mega hits could come. Then the Dutch hit us again, with The Voice in 2010.

It took six months and NBC were on air, a year later Australia and the UK were too. Albania, Afghanistan, Cambodia, China – if you can think of a country, there’s a 90% chance it had The Voice, and it all happened quickly. This was a ‘must buy right now’ type of format and it started a decade of urgent purchases that sometimes had no logic, but people were engulfed in FOMO.

2010 also gave us The Great British Bake Off, which is iconic now, but this format was not a Dutch bang. This took two years to travel to a handful of countries and it would take until the early 2020s before it was acquired by the market in vast numbers. Love Island arrived in 2015 but it would take three to four years before it would really catch on in format-friendly countries. That’s a huge wait at a time where options were still mostly of six-month duration.

I am going to say it: Rising Star from Keshet at Mipcom 2013. Did you know that, apparently, 25 countries wildly flashed their chequebooks to acquire rights? This infamous bang probably did better than expected, with most countries getting at least one season to air. Whether they finished the run is another question.

The decade of 2010-2020 was where communication and networking, events and markets exploded. So too did the definition of ‘formats’ (a little too much for my liking) and we were influenced by our neighbouring countries more, we had visibility and access like never before and speed – we had so much speed to make bangs with one format. K7 and The Wit were keeping us updated, our knowledge of the TV ecosystem knew no limits. We had hubs set up for Total Wipeout in Argentina circa 2010 and it meant we truly knew international television.

This really was the decade when the balance shifted, though. Scripted became king. Succession, Chernobyl, Euphoria, Big Little Lies, Killing Eve – these things arrived, and Game of Thrones ended after eight seasons. It was also the decade when revivals of trusted formats began to arrive, with Millionaire in the UK as an example. So much happened in this decade but for formats it showed bangs were possible, although not frequent.

The 2020s
Dutch bang The Floor arrived in 2023 after the quiet Covid years, which brough a shutdown and reset of the market we did not expect but maybe needed. The Floor has taken more than two years to get to the UK, and this has felt a long time, but it has been adapted in more than 25 countries before that – so really that’s not a reflection on the format.

The Floor was a long overdue and much-needed bang. And you have to remember it was Talpa who created FOMO, so this was bound to happen. But I am in awe of the efforts of Talpa Studios because they did not get what Rising Star did in one Mipcom – they have had to build this success over two years. This was in no small part due to the Fox adaptation though, and we have to pay dues to them.

The Traitors – well, technically this was THE bang of the 2020s. De Verraders, as it is known in the Netherlands, grew out of the shadow of The Mole and Werewolves and into the light in 2021. Within two years 50% of the format adaptations appeared; the other 50% would take three to four years. Its mixed reception in markets does not seem to have dinged this format and the BBC/NBC pact for production again gave strength.

This has been the loudest format in recent memory, crossing into ancillary exploitation in the most substantial way and reaching corners of the globe that only Big Brother and The Voice, and possibly Millionaire, have reached. Since the finale of The Celebrity Traitors season one in the UK, it is also one of the shows keeping linear alive.

Now add to this decade the decline in scripted, the shift to risk-aversity and the recommissioning boom plus revivals – we are lucky we have any bangs at all.

The heat-o-meter
So in a market where things don’t go ‘bang’ anymore, what’s hot and what’s not? I let my spicy little pepper talk for itself.

And remember, these ‘opinions’ are my own, but often they are based on fact – and you know I can’t lie.