Reaching

As he prepares to travel to Mipcom, Andrew Llinares, Fremantle’s director of global entertainment, talks to Variety about his market slate and the enduring appeal of the production and distribution powerhouse’s legacy shows, such as “Got Talent,” “Idol” and “The X Factor.”

Leading Fremantle’s entertainment slate at Mipcom are strategic reality show “Pandora’s Box,” comedy format “Knockout Champs” and factual entertainment series “The Secret DNA of Us.”

“Pandora’s Box” was developed by RTL Creative Unit in the Netherlands, with productions already underway in the Netherlands, France and Hungary. The Dutch show is produced by Fremantle’s Blue Circle for RTL Netherlands.

“It feels like an evolution of that strategic reality genre with a new game mechanic at the core of it,” Llinares says.

The show is inspired by the Greek myth – where Pandora, the first mortal woman on Earth, was given a sealed box by the gods. “We have Pandora’s Box at the center of a game with 12 contestants, who are told, ‘Do not open the box.’ If the box remains closed, there’s a big prize fund. However, there are lots of temptations to open the box,” he explains.

He adds, “Two of the players are cursed in each episode; they discover that they’ve been cursed, and that means their busts have been lowered into the box. Whichever two players are in the box at the end of the episode are going to fight in a duel to stay in the competition. So, you don’t want to be in the box.”

The show has the “look of the world of Greek mythology,” Llinares says.

“Knockout Champs,” which comes from Dutch digital label De Stroom and is produced with Blue Circle, features a mix of content creators from the digital world and comedians. The show, which was originally created for YouTube and established a substantial following there, has now been produced for Dutch streamer NPO Start.

“It’s a comedy show in rounds where two teams are trying to make the other team laugh against their will. You score points by making your opponents laugh,” Llinares says.

“Knockout Champs” was created with Supergaande, a group of genuine friends comparable to groups like Sidemen and Beta Squad. It’s boundary-pushing comedy that speaks to a young, diverse generation by staying true to the culture and comedy their in-built fan bases live for.

“We all know YouTube is getting lots of young eyeballs right now, and it can be a struggle to get young eyeballs to traditional television. But what happened was that the young audience absolutely came over to watch the show. They fell in love with the content that they were watching on YouTube, and they followed it to NPO Start,” Llinares says.

“The show was made very much in the same style as the YouTube content. Sometimes when something makes that transition and is made for ‘real TV’ it would potentially be made in a different style, and maybe cleaned up and polished, and jokes that are edgy might be edited out because they’re too edgy.

“There was a very real desire to keep the show exactly the same, so it has the same spirit, the same kind of language, the same edginess to it. What that meant was that the young audience that watched the show felt they were watching something incredibly authentic.

“It’s really fun, and there’s an edge to it, which is the core to its success. It hasn’t allowed itself to be sanitized for regular TV.”

The show’s success with younger audiences has vindicated the approach. “We shouldn’t give up on young people just because it’s harder to reach them. Young people consume content probably more than anybody else on the planet, and I still want our formats to speak to young people. I want young people to be excited by our formats,” Llinares says.

“Knockout Champs” held the top spot for four weeks on NPO Start. In the same timeframe, on social media it exploded with 50 million plus views in just four weeks. It ranks as NPO Start’s third most-watched title so far this year. The show’s core audience is young men (78% of the audience are 16 to 34 year old men).

Fremantle happily embraces both traditional television and the digital world, Llinares says. “My take is that the world of entertainment is just getting broader, and there is a space for all of it, to interact with it, with all the different pieces of it. It’s a little like how KSI coming in as a judge on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ speaks to that kind of melding of those worlds. I don’t think they’re separate anymore. I think that it’s all mainstream, and there’s a way of bringing it together.”

“The Secret DNA of Us” is a “warm hug of a show,” Llinares says. It was created by Fremantle label Naked in the U.K., and the first version of it was produced by Eureka in Australia for SBS. “Each episode, we take an entire town and test their DNA, and from that we find out what the common connections between people in the town are. We also find some really interesting individual stories from that DNA. So you get this amazing sense of community, this amazing sense of people in a community finding out that they’re linked in all sorts of ways. They might share a similar story. They might even be related. And then you’ll get those people that we really highlight in the show, who find out remarkable things about themselves.

“So it’s a warm hug is a good way of describing it, because it’s one of those shows that speaks to all of us, wanting to know who we are and where we’re from. It can be a really joyful show, it can be a funny show, but it can be a very emotional show as well.”

For a show to be a success, it needs to feel culturally relevant, Llinares observes. “For something to take off and go beyond being a TV show, that becomes something that people talk about in society, it absolutely does have to touch the moment, and speak to the culture of the moment.”

Reviewing his three headliners at Mipcom, Llinares says, “I think they all speak to very different needs of the market, and they also speak to different audiences. They all tick very different boxes.”

Some of Fremantle’s evergreen formats have either celebrated or are about to reach major milestones. In the summer, “America’s Got Talent” started its 20th series, and next year Fremantle celebrates 70 years of “The Price Is Right,” 50 years of “Family Feud” and 25 years of “Idol.”

Llinares is well-qualified to comment on the success of such globe-trotting formats. He was the original showrunner on “The X Factor” and “Got Talent” when they first launched in the U.K. in 2004 and 2007, respectively. Since 2011, while living and working in the U.S., he was an EP and showrunner for the U.S. version of “The X Factor,” before becoming EP and showrunner on “Dancing With the Stars” in 2018.

What’s the secret to their continued success? “With great shows and keeping them on air for many years that core DNA of the show is so, so important,” Llinares says.

“What’s wonderful about ‘Got Talent’ is that it’s been around for 20 years now, and it’s continued to grow in terms of the types of talents on the show and the scale of the show, but the DNA of the show has remained the same, which is taking people and celebrating their extraordinary talents and the amazing stories that go along with that.

“It’s an amazing fairytale of a show. When you boil it down, it’s about taking people and absolutely celebrating the best version of them and I think that central core DNA of the show has never, ever changed.”

The introduction of the Golden Buzzer is one innovation, but it simply enhanced the emotional punch of the show.

“I always think a show like ‘Got Talent’ is an emotional journey. You see that in those audition shows. You have the emotion of someone coming in and wanting to make it through, wanting to be celebrated. And if they get a ‘Yes,’ you get this huge, amazing moment, as we did with someone like Susan Boyle back in the day. The Golden Buzzer just takes that moment and makes it even bigger and makes it more of a spectacle.”

He adds, “I always say we’re in the business of feelings, and so you have to make sure the show makes you feel something. And I think the talent shows in particular make people feel in a very extreme way, like you feel extreme joy or extreme sorrow, depending on whether someone’s doing well or if they have a bad week, and they’re eliminated. As producers, you have to continue to then think, ‘How do I find a new way of creating that emotion?’

“So, really, when it boils down, what’s the success of a great format? It’s the audience being engaged.”

Nowadays, engagement also means social media interaction. “When we’re talking about longevity, we know one of the things that keeps the conversation going around the shows is social video,” Llinares says. “The auditions are wonderful bite-sized stories. They’re perfect for that kind of viewing, they are doing extraordinary numbers.”

“We got a first-window into it with Susan Boyle, and even Paul Potts on the first British series, when YouTube was in its absolute infancy. It had grown in a couple of years between the two of them to the point where it felt like there was a huge global story around Susan Boyle.

“We’re marking an incredible 20 seasons of ‘America’s Got Talent’ – a series that just reached 1.7 billion social video views.

“Fremantle has a long-standing legacy in creating enduring entertainment hits – across decades and platforms – and part of that success comes from constantly evolving with audiences.

“You can see a bridging of the worlds of linear and digital entertainment, whether it’s the breakout success of ‘Knockout Champs’ co-created with digital-first talent; making YouTuber KSI a permanent judge on the next season of ‘Britain’s Got Talent,’ or opening up our IP to make exciting creator-led titles like ‘Sidemen Supermarket Sweep.’”