1) LACK OF INNOVATION IN THE INNOVATION AWARDS?
Last week there was the ceremony for the assignments of TBI’s Content Innovation Awards. For the unscripted part, the winners are: The Masked Singer UK - Entertainment Format of the Year; Holey Moley - Competition Show of the Year; My Big Family Farm - Reality Show of the Year.
They are all good shows, but The Masked Singer (which was actually a very innovative format) premiered in South Korea 6 years ago; Holey Moley, which features contestants competing against each other in a series of head-to-head matchups on a supersized miniature golf obstacle course, is fresh and fun but doesn’t seem particularly innovative; and finally My Big Family Farm, which follows shepherds Amanda and Clive Owen as they raise their nine children—and more than a thousand sheep—on one of the most remote and spectacular farms in Britain, has had great success in UK and in other Countries, but it is quite a traditional docu.
Shouldn’t a prize called “innovation” dare a bit more?
2) SOCIAL DESSERT
The Perfect Dessert, a baking competition series produced by Keshet International, has been broadcast locally on Israel’s channel Keshet 12 with good results.
The structure is simple: the format pits amateur bakers against each other to see which is the nation’s best dessert. Each contestant places his/her creation in a transparent dumb waiter that is then transported to the judges’ room, where they eye up the dessert. If it passes the visual test, the judges will try it, and if not, it goes back uneaten. This mechanism draws particular attention to the visual aspect of the desserts, making them appealing and “spreadable” on the socials -especially Instagram-, translating that social-media-feel to TV.
To push this element, Keshet 12 in the second series (already commissioned) is considering bringing an influencer among the judges to hook more the younger viewers. This would be without doubt a clever move.
3) NATPE ONLINE AND ON-SITE
Two days ago, Wednesday 10th November, the NATPE Streaming Plus took place, online -as the title says- but also in person, at the W Hollywood Hotel of Los Angeles. It was a long day packed with conferences and events, from 9:00 am to 6:30 pm. Among them: a roundtable about Creating Content for Global Streamers, a talk about Content and Acquisition for AVOD, a keynote on How to Create and Engage Branded Content Platforms and a few sessions of networking.
It was for sure an interesting appointment in itself, but, to tell the truth, it seems more the “dress rehearsal” of the bigger, more strategic and “practical” NATPE Miami, which will take place from 18th to 20th January 2022, and is going to be structured as a mainly in-person event, with an online extension.
The hybrid model seems definitively to be the winning formula of the future of the markets (and not only).