Formats are a strong theme at this year’s Australian International Documentary Conference. And if you have a format, and you want to strike a deal for it, what do you need to keep in mind?
You’d already know that formats are all over your TV screen. From Big Brother to Who Wants to Be Millionaire to Go Back to Where You Came From, formats (shows with “a framework which contains several clearly described elements that are combined in a unique way”) are TV mainstays. What you might not know is that worldwide in 2009, formats generated production worth € 9.3 billion (that’s with a “b”), or $11.8 billion. And that amount would only have gone up since then.
