Brit format TV rules the global airwaves

I found this interesting stat in, all of places, Foreign Policy magazine. In a piece called "Britannia Rules the Airwaves" (July/August 2005, p. 19, paid registration required), FP cites figures from Screen Digest indicating that the UK has, by some margin, become the world's biggest exporter of format TV - bigger even than the US. Format TV, btw, is the entertainment industry's term for "reality" and formula-based shows that can be franchised in local forms to markets across the world. We've talked about this before (e.g., Who's getting dumbed down? and Format programming: UK rules - in fact this piece might be quoting the same stats that Doctor Media noted back in April from Screen Digest, including an informative downloadable PDF file, so consider this a reinforcement of that post). Anyway, FP notes that format TV exports are a $3 billion global business, and the UK gets the biggest chunck of this new pie - "more than 30 percent", according to Screen Digest. The magazine quotes figures for the top five exporters of format TV in 2004 (in hours) as follows:

• Britain, 3,795 hours
  
• Netherlands, 2,569 hours
  
• USA, 2,236 hours
  
• Australia, 718 hours
  
• Sweden, 558 hours

The prominence of the Netherlands is largely due to Endemol, the Dutch-based producer of "Big Brother." But, according to the April 12 Screen Digest news release (linked to by Doctor Media), Britain's prime place has been cemented by companies such as Celador Productions ("Who Wants to be a Millionaire"), and the BBC ("The Weakest Link"). (Curiously, the April release makes no mention of the recent success of Granada International.)

The FP piece notes that, to date, Who Wants to be a Millionaire "has been sold to 106 countries, and Pop Idol can be found in places as far flung as Iceland, Kazakhstan, and Lebanon." Interestingly, "the top four importers of this Brit-dominated genre are all continental European countries" (in order, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain). The piece doesn't say anything specific about British exports to the United States, though the fact that Britain's total exports are some 70 percent higher than the US's is telling.