It’s an amazing role reversal. Americans dominate the global markets for television, and tend to claim credit for all its creative innovations. But British influence on American TV goes back to the idea for Archie Bunker, the iconic Everyman of the 1970s, and has never been stronger than it is today. Americans invented game shows, true, but it’s the British who are putting real people into ever more sensational games. Many of the top U.S. shows are based on “formats” or plots created by British producers, from the contests of the fittest on “Survivor” (CBS), to the Marine drills on “Boot Camp” (Fox). On “Weakest Link,” they walk away with up to $1 million if they can weather Robinson’s abuse and outwit the other guests. Overall British exports of formats–ideas for shows that can be customized for foreign markets–jumped 14 percent last year. Flush with success, British producers are setting up “incubators” to grow new ideas for the U.S. market.
This boomlet speaks volumes about the commercialization of British TV. After multichannel television arrived in the late 1980s, the landscape changed. BSkyB and others introduced new channels, many showing cheap American reruns. To compete, major networks had to come up with more-creative local shows. “It’s the reason that ITV [one of the five major British channels] shows more ‘Coronation Street’ and less ‘Colombo’,” says Rupert Dilnott-Cooper, CEO of Carlton International Media.
Then Margaret Thatcher entered the plot. Early in her government, a major network sent a crew of 20 to film a simple interview. As the story goes, Thatcher saw this as a symptom of bloat in public TV, and her disgust led to a 1990 law requiring big broadcasters to buy at least 25 percent of their programming from independent producers. By 1999 the law had exceeded its goal: 44 percent of British programming was created by indies, which would revolutionize British television both at home and as Americans know it.
Until recently, British shows in the United States were confined to costume dramas, wildlife shows and quirky comedies broadcast in the high-culture ghetto of public television. U.S. networks stuck to their own formulaic sitcoms and dramas, until adventurous new cable channels started stealing their viewers. The networks started looking for hits in Britain, and in 1999 ABC took the first big step, licensing the format of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” from a London indie, Celador Productions. Other European producers, including Endemol of the Netherlands, would follow, but the invasion is mainly British. “If we’d gone straight to the U.S. networks with ‘Millionaire’ without doing it first in the U.K., they’d have said no,” says Ellis Watson, managing director of Celador. “America is not the bravest of nations when it comes to programming. They’ll watch how something is done in the U.K., market the heck out of it, then pretend like it was theirs to begin with.”
That’s the whole idea. The Americans did it first with game shows like “Family Feud” and “The Price Is Right,” selling those programs around the world, and allowing producers to create a local version with local stars. As one CBS insider puts it, the rest of the world used to be “just one big export market.” But after the success of “Millionaire,” broadcasters were eager to import formats from Britain. CBS snapped up “Survivor,” which had been turned down by ABC and Fox a few years before. Fox bought “Boot Camp,” developed by Granada Media. And NBC nabbed the “Weakest Link” format and its host, Robinson. “One thing we Americans know how to do is imitate,” says Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Entertainment. “It’s like the Stones bringing blues back to America,” says David Lyle, who heads the North American TV arm of Pearson. “It took Europe to remind the States how well those shows could work.”
The formula is easy to grasp. Reality and game shows grab high ratings for production costs as little as one tenth those of a top sitcom or drama. Reality shows are particularly cheap. They don’t involve actors, so even if the show is a hit, the network doesn’t have to deal with the " ‘Friends’ syndrome"–hugely inflated star salaries. And as long as a Hollywood writers strike looms this summer, networks will continue to stock up on programming that doesn’t require scripts.
Now that a few Britons have hitched a ride on the Hollywood gravy train, more are sure to follow. A number of British production companies, including Pearson, have set up incubators to develop ideas specifically for the U.S. market. “Boot Camp” was the first show to come out of Granada’s Greenhouse, a development arm started a year ago. Fifty more shows are in the works. The producer behind “Weakest Link,” David Young, has left the BBC to form his own company, 12 Yard Productions, which will pitch formats globally.
Even the BBC is thinking beyond Jane Austen and spotted leopards. Rupert Gavin, the head of BBC Worldwide, says that for the past few years the business and creative sides of the company have worked together much earlier in the development process to create shows with export and merchandising appeal. “Teletubbies” is an obvious example; “Weakest Link” another. “We put a lot more money than usual into developing the ‘Weakest Link’,” says Gavin. “We took an American approach, looking at a lot of different ideas, and piloting several of them.”
Wisely, Gavin also hung onto the format rights for the show. Aside from big U.S. hits like “ER,” most countries prefer to watch their own local dramas and comedies. But game shows like “Weakest Link” are easy to tailor to each national audience. It’s currently running in 47 countries, including Turkey and El Salvador, and the BBC expects it to make 6 million [Pound sterling] in its first year.
It remains to be seen whether the influence of British ideas will go beyond game shows. History suggests it will, despite the recent failure of comedy formats like “Men Behaving Badly” (which was lifeless in its American incarnation). In fact, several of the best American shows were actually based on British formats. “All in the Family” was an adaptation of “Till Death Do Us Part,” in which actor Tony Booth, the father of First Lady Cherie Blair, played Bunker’s liberal son-in-law, Meathead. And “Sanford and Son” was a U.S. version of “Steptoe and Son,” a British sitcom about a Cockney father and son who run a “rag and bones” business in Shepherd’s Bush, then a rough area of London. Beryl Vertue, the legendary British agent and producer who sold those edgy, pathbreaking shows to Norman Lear, says they would probably end up on cable today.
In fact, “Queer as Folk,” a controversial British gay drama set in Manchester, was recently and very successfully formatted on the U.S. cable channel Showtime. But there is some evidence that the mainstream American networks are increasingly willing to take a risk on British comedies. Carlton is developing a comedy about a thirtysomething loser in the States, and CBS is piloting a U.S. version of the British sitcom “The Royale Family.” Americans may have started the TV export business. But in the era of 500 channels, they need to shop the world for the strongest links, or say goodbye.
