News
How Do We Measure a Successful Commissioning System?
What does a good BBC commissioning system actually look like? Not hit rate, but how cheaply it finds failure and what it's still creating five years on.
Jonathan Glazier
Jonathan Glazier is a format creator, executive producer and multicamera director. A former BBC Head of Format Entertainment, he writes Format Forward on the development of unscripted TV formats.
Market Intel
The Rise of the Super Format
The Top 20 returning TV formats of the last decade, ranked on renewals rather than ratings. The Rise of the Super Format The Top 20 returning TV formats of the last decade, ranked on renewals rather than ratings. TL;DR Ratings are not published everywhere. Revenue is almost never disclosed.
Market Wall
TV Format Market Reports 2026 | The Format Atlas
Seven territory reports on the 2026 format market. What "downturn" really means in each, before Edinburgh and MIP.
The Premortem. Find the failure before the failure finds you.
A structured failure analysis of your format, before you spend a penny developing it. Every format that failed looked fine on the day it was greenlit. That is the problem. Nobody commissions something they expect to fail. The reasons were there, in the document, in the first meeting, but they
Format Lab
The Shared Script: Why Nobody Watched The Neighbourhood
Why The Neighbourhood failed before it aired, and how the Shared Script Test exposes whether a reality format rests on lived experience or nostalgia.
Format Lab
The Three Ways a TV Format Dies: Failure Models Every Developer Should Know
Why do TV formats fail? Three failure models, from The Neighbourhood to Limitless Win to Cash Cab, and a diagnostic checklist for format developers.
Format Lab
Format Lab: The Traitors, Teardown #1
The Traitors stripped to its six core mechanics. A format developer's teardown showing which parts of the engine you can reuse, and how to avoid a clone.
Market Wall
ITV Studios Is Now the Orphaned Asset. Where Does It Go for Comfort?
Sky's ITV takeover leaves ITV Studios standalone right as Banijay and All3Media merge. What it means for format creators pitching new shows.
Market Wall
How to Make a living Creating Formats
How to Make a living Creating Formats, or who pays your mortgage
Format Lab
ITV Chase Around The World a format extension, or hanging off the success of BBC's Race Across the World?
The Chase Around The World borrows brand recognition from The Chase and format DNA from Race Across the World. Is that clever risk-managed development, or a rip-off? A format development breakdown.
Format Lab
Are We Still Developing Formats for an Industry That No Longer Exists?
There is a quiet problem in unscripted development. We talk about new ideas, new platforms, new buyers, new technology and new audience behaviour. Then we often develop as if the old system still controls everything. The old system had a familiar shape. You found an idea, shaped it into a
Format Lab
What is a Format NOW?
We need to talk about what a "format" is now, in this changed world of making stuff for people to watch.