This was one session that seen WIT present the world’s freshest and most popular TV shows of the season; specially edited for ‘Frames’ participants. It included clips from the world’s most successful, innovative and most talked-about TV shows based on the monthly ‘The WIT fresh TV report”. The show tracks new shows launched in more than 30 markets and covers the most reactive trends across different programming genres.
Reed Midem’s CEO Paul Zilk gave the introductory speech while the session was moderated by Reeds TV Division director Paul Johnson. There were also valuable insights that were put forth by WIT founder Virginie Moussler.
Virginie Moussler started the session by showing a few clips of various formats of TV shows across the world. She first started with the most famous format ‘Celebrity Reality Show’ clipping. This format has been tried across the globe and is seen as one of the most successful format, she noted. Moussler said that the music and dance format is fairly successful across the globe since it can be easily adapted locally. Apart from this, another reason for the success of this format is that celebrities attract good viewers and this helps in increasing the popularity of the program, she noted.
This session also highlighted few other innovative formats like the knowledge based formats for celebrity-based quiz shows and other knowledge based shows. To substantiate this, a clipping of the show called ‘The Rich List’ which was first started in Australia was shown. This show was a knowledge based quiz show and had a huge cash prize amount. It was a very popular show and was adapted by Germany and other European countries too.
Another innovative TV show and also a very popular one was the ‘Viewer of the year’ show. The show was based on the event that made news on TV that particular year. The winner of the contest was awarded ‘Viewer of the year’ title for that particular year.
Apart from various reality-based shows, the scripted shows also gained popularity in world TV. Virginie spoke about the various scripted content and other comedy based scripted formats that were getting popular. Talking about the adaptation of TV formats she said, “Every format gets adapted locally and content is king. If the story is good the show will work irrespective of which country it comes from. The latest reports show that along with the scripted format, music and dance formats too are gaining popularity around the world.”
Along with these formats, Moussler pointed out that viewers also looked forward to shows that had competition and cash prizes. However, she observed that people were getting attracted to the glory the shows bring rather than the cash prizes. “People don’t mind loosing money on the show but that one appearance on prime time television show makes them participate and aspire to be there while watching these shows,” she said.
The session ended with the note that while celebrity reality shows and other gaming shows were ruling the list, scripted comedy formats and other scripted formats may emerge as the future of television content in the years to come.
