The Market Is Still Buying New Formats. But It Wants Insurance Attached.

A fortnight of new format announcements suggests the market is still moving. But the real story is not what is being bought. It is what buyers now need before they feel able to say yes.

Over the last two weeks, a handful of new unscripted and entertainment formats have been announced.

On the surface, that sounds encouraging.

New ideas. New launches. New commissions. New development. The machinery is still moving.

But when you look more closely, the story is more revealing than the headlines suggest. The market is not simply buying new ideas. It is buying ideas with insurance attached.

That insurance might be a known piece of IP. It might be a recognisable host. It might be a creator with an existing audience. It might be a format mechanic so simple that it can be explained in a single sentence. In some cases, it is all of those things at once.

That tells us something important about where the format business is right now.

One of the more charming UK announcements is Dara's Dull Appreciation Society, commissioned by UKTV for its streamer U and free-to-air channel U&Dave. It is a comedy entertainment show built around people celebrating supposedly dull collections, hobbies and obsessions. Dara Ó Briain hosts. John Robins and two rotating guest comedians help judge the best obsession each episode.

That feels very Dave. It is low-risk in the right way. A strong host. A clear comic tone. Real people with genuine passions. A format that does not need a huge prize fund, a giant set or a complicated rulebook. The title does a lot of the selling before anyone has read the treatment.

It is worth noting the show was piloted under the working titles "Britain's Dullest" and "Celebrate The Mundane" before it was confirmed. In other words, it was tested before anyone committed. That is the insurance instinct in action.

It also sits neatly inside one of the safer routes through the current market: modest scale, strong tone, familiar talent, and a world viewers can understand immediately.

At the other end of the same conversation sits Tubi in the US, launching Substitute Teacher and House Rules from Wall of Entertainment.

These are interesting because they point towards another direction of travel. They are not just broadcaster-led formats in the old sense. They come with creator talent attached.

Substitute Teacher is a comedy game show that mixes sketch, trivia and physical challenges in a classroom setting. House Rules is a relationship game show in which two couples compete to prove who really runs the household.

Neither idea needs a complicated explanation. That is the point. They feel designed to move from social audience to streaming platform without losing their basic energy. In that world, the creator is not just the presenter. The creator is part of the financing logic. They bring reach, tone, community and promotional momentum.

And there is a further piece of insurance in the deal itself. Tubi did not only take the two new shows. It also took more than 100 episodes of Wall of Entertainment's existing library. The new ideas arrived alongside a proven back-catalogue. That is belief, hedged.

Fox Creator Studios is moving in similar territory, developing shows with creators including Sorted Food, Mad Realities and Speeed Co. The ideas range from a dinner party deception game (Sorted Food's In Bad Taste), to two formats from Mad Realities, a real-time dating series called The Love Pitch and a picky-eater food competition called Picky Eaters, and a generational comparison show from Speeed Co called Then vs Now.

What links them is not genre. It is packaging.

These are not simply format ideas. They are creator-led propositions. They arrive with some proof of audience, tone and promotability before a commissioner has to take the full leap.

And the Fox model makes the logic explicit. Fox finances the productions and takes a stake in the IP, but gives no notes, keeps no final cut, and lets the shows launch on the creators' own platforms rather than on Fox itself. The audience is the asset.

That is a major shift.

For years, producers pitched broadcasters a premise, a paper format, maybe a taster tape, and a promise that the show could find an audience. Increasingly, the pitch now says: here is the idea, here is the talent, here is the audience, here is the tone, and here is evidence that people already respond to this world.

That does not make the ideas lesser. It makes them different kinds of format packages.

It also creates a challenge for traditional format developers. A clever mechanic may no longer be enough. A great title may no longer be enough. Even a good tape may not be enough. Buyers want to know where the audience energy is coming from before the show has aired.

The same risk logic is visible in the return of older brands.

Fear Factor: House of Fear has secured its first international adaptation in Finland, commissioned by Nelonen Media and its streamer Ruutu, and produced by Banijay Finland. The interesting part is not simply that Fear Factor is back in circulation. It is how it has been reworked. The new version adds a social experiment layer, with contestants living together, forming alliances and facing psychological pressure alongside physical fear challenges.

That feels very 2026.

The original Fear Factor belonged to an era when the stunt was the show. The modern version needs a social game around the stunt. It needs alliances, suspicion, mind games and relationship jeopardy. The trade coverage credits the recent US reboot, the Johnny Knoxville-hosted House of Fear on Fox, as the direct inspiration. But you can also see, sitting underneath it, some of the emotional grammar that The Traitors has helped make mainstream.

That is what revival now means. You cannot simply dust off an old title and expect the market to respond. The IP may get you through the first door, but the format still needs a new operating system.

The continuing international life of older quiz and gameshow brands tells a related story. Globo in Brazil is adapting The Weakest Link as O Elo Fraco, continuing the revival of one of the most durable quiz formats of the last 25 years.

There is a detail here that matters for anyone reading the market closely. In Brazil, O Elo Fraco is not launching as a standalone show. It is being built in as a segment inside Globo's existing Sunday programme Em Família com Eliana, hosted by Eliana, from the second half of 2026. So Globo is not betting on a brand-new vehicle. It is bolting a proven quiz onto an audience that is already stable. That is about as clear an example of insurance as you will find.

I have a personal fondness for The Weakest Link, for obvious reasons. But its return also says something commercially important. When the market feels nervous, buyers often look again at formats with proven bones.

A quiz with a clear engine, a strong catchphrase, a distinctive tone and a repeatable structure can still travel. Especially when local broadcasters want something recognisable but affordable.

That does not mean the market has run out of ambition. It means ambition now has to present itself in a form that feels containable.

Even the quieter factual-entertainment activity points in the same direction. Muster Dogs, the Australian working-dog competition format, is being adapted in new territories. A New Zealand version, Muster Dogs NZ, is in production for Sky New Zealand, and a US version is in production for Wonder Project on Prime Video, where it carries a new title, Wonder Dogs. Both are slated for 2027. UK and French rights have also been optioned. These are not always the announcements that dominate the trade press, but they matter.

Animal, craft, rural life and skills-based factual-entertainment formats can travel steadily because they speak to universal relationships: people and animals, work and pride, tradition and competition. They are not trying to reinvent television every episode. They offer warmth, competence, jeopardy and emotional clarity.

Not every valuable format needs to shout.

That is the deeper pattern.

The current market does not reject newness. It is just wary of unsupported newness.

A new idea now seems to need something else travelling with it. A host who gives it tone. A creator who brings an audience. A familiar title that reduces the fear of the unknown. A known behaviour that viewers already understand. A production shape that feels affordable. A sentence that survives the journey from producer, to commissioner, to channel controller, to marketing department, to viewer.

That last point matters more than we sometimes admit.

A format does not only have to work on screen. It has to travel through a chain of belief before it ever reaches the screen. Someone has to understand it quickly. Someone has to repeat it accurately. Someone has to defend it in a meeting where budgets are tight, slots are under pressure and failure has consequences.

That is why simplicity remains so powerful.

Not simplistic. Simple.

The kind of simple that allows complexity to sit underneath. Casting can be complex. Game design can be complex. The emotional architecture can be complex. The production choreography can be complex. But the promise to the audience has to be clean.

What am I watching?

Why does it matter?

Why should I care now?

Those questions have always mattered, but they matter even more in a nervous market. Originality alone does not answer them. In fact, originality can sometimes increase the risk if the buyer cannot see the audience pathway.

That is why creator-led formats feel so timely. They arrive with a community already attached. That is why old IP keeps returning, but with new social mechanics fitted under the bonnet. That is why modest factual-entertainment formats can travel quietly while louder ideas struggle. They give the buyer something to hold on to.

The mistake would be to see this as a failure of imagination.

I think it is more useful to see it as a change in the conditions of belief.

The format developer's job has always been to create an engine. Now it is also to create confidence around the engine. Not by making the idea safe to the point of blandness, but by making the risk legible.

That is the narrow bridge.

Too familiar, and nobody needs it.

Too unfamiliar, and nobody trusts it.

The formats that seem to be moving through the market now understand that tension. They are fresh enough to give a buyer a reason to talk about them, but familiar enough to give that same buyer a reason to say yes.

For anyone creating formats, that is the challenge.

Not just: what is the idea?

But: what makes this idea feel safe enough to buy, and fresh enough to matter?

That is exactly the territory I want to explore through Format Forward: a place to take a rigorous, forensic look at what makes formats work, why they travel, why they fail, and what the market is really telling us beneath the headlines.

Because the announcements are useful.

But the pattern behind the announcements is where the real story lives.

If you build, buy or sell formats, this is the conversation I want to have here every week. Subscribe to alt.media for a clear, honest read on what the market is actually doing, not just what it is announcing. And if you disagree with any of this, tell me. The argument is the point.

Jonathan Glazier

I'm dyslexic and use AI to help make my writing readable. The thoughts and opinions are my own. Nothing here is auto-generated. I read and research with rigour.

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