With more than two decades of supporting the format protection in the global marketplace, FRAPA analyzed again the state of the global format business at LA Virtual Screenings through key executives and members of the association: K7 Media, Something Special (South Korea) and HBMC (USA).
The session, moderated by Phil Gurin, CEO The Gurin Company, and FRAPA Co-Chairman, featured David Ciaramella, Communications Manager, K7 Media (UK); Jinwoo Hwang, president and executive producer, Something Special (South Korea); and Hayley Babcock, CEO, HBMC (USA).
‘We want to inspire executives to be good global citizens in the format business. Formats of thriving all over the world there are multiple genres which id like to talk about and examine which genres are working best which are, but the business side of formats is also changeling because i got into formats, because I love content creation and I also wanted to create content that perhaps we could own or co-own’, expressed Gurin.
Babcock, who works with clients from all over the world, accompanies her US clients throughout the process to generate the best deals, produce and develop formats, and also to acquire them, said: ‘I think that the appetite for formats in the US and abroad is really great and today it is generating many opportunities to achieve peer agreements, especially when you are a small and medium-sized production company within the industry’. The exec it precisely in that she is seeing an ‘explosion’ of new genres, from the most ‘weird to the most inventive’. In addition, noted that buyers are looking for formats that have more local impact: ‘They want to have content that speaks to people about their own customs and ways of life’.
Meanwhile, Hwang remarked that ‘the most important thing about formats is that today this business has become a global community of filmmakers, producers, writers and buyers of this type of content, so there are already firmer issues, especially in relation to author rights, or fair agreements for creators’. The executive also agreed with Babcock that business models are ‘more flexible and believes that this is generating ‘a hopeful light in the format industry’. ‘Another trend that we’ve been noticing is that there is a lot of interest from buyers in formats that are going to have real engagement, not just because of seeing this content, but because of its impact across all platforms and media’, he added
As for K7 Media, Ciaramella offered a business look: ‘I think the global market it feels really particular right now. It feels buoyant, especially now that we were able to back out to meeting people F2F and going to the markets. I think that the formats were that content that had more adaptability during the pandemic: it generated new business and production models, adjusting to needs, and that also attracted much more attention from the audience, in the case of entertainment formats’.
Regarding engagement in social media, the executive concluded that it was something that Free TV had been doing with great success, even before social networks, and is normal that digital platforms will want to join that: ‘I think that this is driven to platforms to take new forms of transmission more similar to TV in their eagerness to replicate those engagement metrics, instead of publish all the episodes at once’.
