> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.formatforward.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Development Team Moved to YouTube - URL: https://www.formatforward.com/the-development-team-moved-to-youtube/ - Published: 2026-10-20T10:29:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-20T10:29:00.000Z - Description: The Wit's MIPCOM data shows a 62% fall in new formats travelling. The more interesting slide was about YouTube. - Author: Jonathan Glazier - Tags: Format Lab, TV format Development, MIPCOM2026, format forward ## TL;DR - The Wit told MIPCOM that new formats travelling abroad have fallen 62% in a decade. Returning seasons of established formats are up 15%. - The more important slide was about YouTube. The Wit studied nearly 6,000 successful videos to find mechanics that could become TV formats. - That is development work, done in public and paid for by creators. Broadcasters then buy the proven result. - For development teams, the idea is no longer the scarce thing. Judgement about which idea will come back is. ## The number everyone quoted Every MIPCOM has one number that follows you down the Croisette. This year it came from Virginia Mouseler of The Wit, and it wasn't kind. In 2013–14, 84 new formats secured at least one international option within a year of launch. In 2024–25 it was 32\. That is a 62% fall. British formats took the hardest hit, dropping from 24 travelling in 2019 to nine in 2025. The bigger hits have thinned out even more. Formats reaching three or more adaptations fell from 64 to nine between 2015 and 2025. But look at the other side of the ledger. New adaptations of recent formats are down 40% on 2018–19, while extra seasons of established formats are up 15%. Buyers haven't stopped spending on formats. They have stopped spending on new ones. Regular readers will know I think that is the right way to read a format business. A sale tells you a format travelled. A renewal tells you it worked. The market is now voting the same way, with its wallet. And there is one more number worth holding on to. The few formats that do break through now travel twice as fast. The average time to a third adaptation has dropped from 737 days to 370\. Fewer hits, moving faster. ## The slide that mattered more The 62% got the headlines. The slide I keep coming back to was the one about YouTube. The Wit analysed 5,935 successful YouTube videos published between 31 August and 6 October this year. They weren't looking for creators to sign. They were looking for mechanics, the repeatable bits of game play that could carry a TV format. They found clusters. Videos built around doors, escape routes and challenges that get harder as you go pulled 75 million views across seven videos in five weeks. Confinement, escape and last-person-standing challenges pulled 230 million views across 40 videos. The advice that came with it was close to a development formula. Find a creator concept that already works. Expand it for another platform. Turn proven online engagement into a TV pitch. One of the new formats in the same session showed what that looks like. 100 Doors, from French producer Dreamspark, puts ten celebrities in an arena with one hundred numbered doors. Behind each is a challenge, a clue or elimination. Only one leads out. That is a YouTube mechanic, scaled up and given a studio. Now think about what The Wit actually did there. It scanned a market, tagged the mechanics, measured the audience response and handed buyers a shortlist. That used to be called development. ## Follow the money In August I argued that the format business hasn't shrunk as much as people think, but the paid development function inside it has been gutted. MIPCOM made me want to sharpen that. Development hasn't gone away. It has moved, and someone else is paying for it. A creator tests an idea in public. The audience tells them within days if it works. The cost of a failed idea is one video, funded by ad revenue and brand deals. If it works, the views are the proof. A broadcaster or streamer then buys something that has already been tested on millions of people. Compare that with the traditional route. A development team spends months on a paper format. It gets a meeting, maybe a taster tape, maybe a pilot. The commissioner is asked to back a guess. When money is tight, you can see why buyers prefer the first route. They are not buying an idea any more. They are buying evidence. The rest of the MIPCOM agenda points the same way. Netflix talked about learning to work like a YouTube creator with the Sidemen. Fox is buying digital creators' content for international distribution. BBC Studios is growing a quiz and trivia channel on YouTube. The market is building pipes from YouTube to TV, and paying for what comes down them. So the question for anyone in development is a hard one. If a creator can prove the mechanic for free, what is a development team being paid for? ## Where the argument breaks Before anyone throws their development slate in the bin, the YouTube evidence has real holes in it. **One creator can bend the data.** Of the 230 million views for confinement and escape challenges, 120 million came from a single MrBeast video. Take him out and the trend looks a lot smaller. That's not a mechanic proving itself. That's a star proving himself. **Views are not ratings.** A YouTube view and a TV audience measure different things. Nobody should put them side by side in a pitch deck and pretend they're the same. **A video is not a series.** A ten-minute video has to hold attention once. A format has to hold it for an hour, for eight weeks, and then bring people back next year. Plenty of mechanics are thrilling for one episode and empty by episode five. **The mechanics are not new.** Doors, escape rooms, last person standing. Fort Boyard and The Crystal Maze were doing this decades ago. Creators are reinventing the delivery, the pace and the relationship with the audience. They are not inventing the game. That last point matters. If the mechanics are old, the value was never really in the mechanic. It is in knowing which one will work, for which audience, at what scale, and whether it will come back. ## What this means for development teams If creators are doing the testing, the development job changes. Here is how I would adjust. 1. **Scout YouTube like a distributor scouts a market.** Someone on the team should be logging creator mechanics every week, with view counts and dates. The Wit did it over five weeks. You can do it every Friday. 2. **Move from inventing to stress-testing.** The scarce skill is no longer the idea. It is working out whether a proven ten-minute mechanic can hold episode five, and whether anyone will want series two. That is a pre-mortem question, not a brainstorm. 3. **Move faster.** If a hit reaches its third territory in about a year, the window to spot it, option it or answer it has halved. 4. **Sort out rights early.** If the mechanic started on a creator's channel, who owns the format? The creator, the platform, the producer who scaled it up? Settle that before the pitch, not after the commission. 5. **Pitch evidence, not hope.** Buyers are paying for proof. Even a paper format can bring some: a tested taster online, a community response, a clear reason it will return. ## The ideas didn't run out The 62% figure will be read as proof that the format business is in trouble. I read it differently. The ideas haven't run out. The money that used to pay for them has moved, and so has the testing. The development teams that survive this won't be the ones with the most ideas. They will be the ones who can look at a proven mechanic and say, with evidence, whether it will still be on air in five years. That is my view. Tell me if you think I'm wrong. If you have a format and want to know whether it will hold beyond episode one, that is what the Pre-Mortem is for. [Work with me](https://www.formatforward.com/work-with-me/) --- Jonathan Glazier Format creator and executive producer, altMedia TV format consultant and former BBC Head of Light Entertainment and International Formats *I am dyslexic. AI helps me make this readable. The thoughts and opinions are my own. There are no auto generated articles and I read and research with rigour.*