1) ONE ORIGINAL FORMAT…
The cuisine of Black America is finally getting its spotlight: The Great Soul Food Cook-Off premieres on Discovery+, in partnership with OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network), just in time for Thanksgiving Day. The show makes its debut on the streaming service on Saturday, November 20, celebrating Black chefs and Black culinary traditions.
The series will pit eight chefs against each other over the course of the episodes, with the winner taking home a grand prize of $50,000. The show aims to help recognize the contributions of Black chefs and culture to the world of food in the same way Black culture has had a massive impact on music, fashion, sports and media at large, with challenges specifically designed to highlight soul food, past and present.
2) …AND ONE REBOOT
ITV America and Blumhouse Television are set to collaborate on a U.S. reboot of the classic ITV British format I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here that could be called Celebrity Castle.
The British series premiered in 2002 and has run for 20 seasons, and typically sees celebrities living together in a jungle environment for weeks, competing to be named King or Queen of the Jungle. The 2 versions of the format have aired in the United States before, first in ABC in 2003 and then again in 2009 on NBC.
The importance of this program in format history is really big and it is a full-fledged classic: it is in fact the prototype of “celeb-survivor” and has been adapted, cloned and copied in dozens of Countries. Long life to it!
3) FINALLY SMALL OPENINGS FOR PAPER FORMATS?
According to K7 Media, paper formats, after a period of decline, are beginning to make a comeback. Among the mentioned examples there are Magnify Media's reality Love Raft and Media Ranch’s format Love Van, and among territories happy to look at paper concepts they name The Netherlands, Korea and Germany.
This is really good news: papers are the basis of formats and therefore of creativity. If this fundamental step is blocked because buyers are looking only for proven track records, the whole chain will begin to worsen. In any case, the experience of markets tells us that it’s still quite difficult to find buyers for papers: generally it’s much easier to get appreciations rather than deals…