So here’s a format that’s gaining traction around the world (it’s just sold to NBC in the US, and the BBC are apparently piloting it), John De Mol’s The Winner Is….
In it, 64 people duel off singing in front of a panel of judges (101 members of the audience in the original). After each duel, the contestants can decide to take money and leave the competition, putting thier opponent through to play for bigger money, or stay on and let the panel decide who goes through and who leaves with nothing. The top prize is a million.
Unlike The Voice which starts really high then drops throughout the series, ratings for the original Dutch and German shows suggest this starts low and then just sort of stay low. This appears to be De Mol doing his very own For The Rest Of Your Life.
You can try watching it here: http://www.thewinneris.nl/videos/afleveringen/409/show-7
It is pretty amazing it is selling, because not only the ratings are way under average; (critical) reception has been poor and, to my honest opinion, the format doesnt work at all. how can you have a talent singing contest, when it is all about the money.
In the Dutch series there was not a single artist performing anywhere near artists in Idols, X-factor or The Voice.
…wow. Those ratings are even lower than The Exit List ever got. In a bigger country.
Can we make that claim? While I’m in a Euromaths mood, here’s some Euromaths.
Germany is about 30% larger than the UK. Each location has about five popular channels (networked ARD, ZDF, RTL, Sat.1, and the regional 3rd programme), all getting 10-14% shares. ITV has a 15% share, Sat.1 about 10%. Germany watches less television, typically 23 hours per person per week compared to 28 hours in the UK.
From all that, I reckon the least unfair comparison is to multiply the German figures up by about 1.55, and examine against ITV audiences. On that basis, 1.63 German millions translates to about 2.5 British millions, which I’d say was “disappointing” for primetime ITV. It’s about the size of the audience they’re getting for shows opposite “The Voice”.
The most telling point is that the local commentators say it’s “a large disappointment”, and Herr das Bewertungsbär says “mmm, Abendessen”.
In the Netherlands these were the ratings and shares:
1: 1.080.000 (15.5)
2: 642.000 (9.3)
3: 813.000 (11.5)
4: 520.000 (7.5)
5: 465.000 (6.9)
6: 521.000 (7.7)
7: 449.000 (6.4)
8: 493.000 (x.x) (final episode)
A couple of notes though: broadcaster is in really bad shape, although even for this channel the shares and ratings are way below average.
It was moved from Monday to Thursday after two episodes.
The expectation of the creator was at least 1,000,000 viewers.
The winner of the show hasn’t had any hit whatsoever.
In comparison to these ratings, the other talent shows we had:
Show – average – final episode
Idols:
Seizoen 1: 4.683.390 || 4.960.600
Seizoen 2: 3.372.000 || 3.401.000
Seizoen 3: 2.931.000 || 3.452.000
Seizoen 4: 1.997.000 || 2.595.000
Popstars
Seizoen 1: 1.779.000
Seizoen 2: 2.175.000 || 2.536.000
Seizoen 3: 1.206.000 || 1.698.000
X factor
Seizoen 1: 1.846.000 || 1.780.000
Seizoen 2: 1.787.000 || 2.547.000
Seizoen 3: 1.986.000 || 2.109.000
Seizoen 4: 1.934.000 || 1.682.000
The Voice of Holland
Seizoen 1: 3.744.000 || 3.238.000
Seizoen 2: 3.607.000 || 3.046.000
Thanks SquareEyes!
I should be noted Germany bought it before it aired in the NEtherlands, where IIRC it was up against Wie Is De Mol, and WIDM smashed it, despite being over ten years old.
Actually, I think this could work here…but they have to market this right:
They have to emphasize the bracket-style format of the show and not the deal-making aspect of it.
Say a month before the show starts, have all 64 contestants do a video online, to introduce themselves and do a song. Play up the sporting aspect of it.
A NBC sponsored bracket-prediction contest is an absolute must. People are attuned to filling out brackets here because of the March Madness tournament (for example 6.5 million entries in the ESPN contest this year alone).
The show should be live every week (on the other versions, the shows were taped except the last couple of weeks)- even though the home audience doesn’t have a chance to vote until the round of 8 and later (then it’s based on a 201-point format; 100 home votes, 101 studio votes). It brings a little more immediacy to the process, and there can be a lot of “post-game” analysis…
The permanent “head” of the studio jury needs to be selected carefully. They need a person experienced in music but still photogenic.
An interesting idea, although asking viewers to watch 64 videos online pre show is a big ask.
In Germany is was a big flop gaining about 1.6 million viewers per episode… The format was very nice though, but I think there were big mistakes, that are very obvious. First of all all categories are shown in every episode (there is one duel per category per episode). This is why no one ever knew who was still in the competition and who was still to come. The next problem was the money. You were able to sing as bad as you wanted and you were able to take the 5000€ without any restrictions (probably the wrong word :-D). It would have been better if you were guaranteed 5000€ and then able to see the result without knowing which side was who’s ( this part was featured in the later apisode and made it much more interesting) and then you should have been able to say “you (opponent) can buy 10 votes from me for 3000€, because then you’ll get to the next round for sure and I leave with 8000€” So less confident people would make the deal, but would also lose some money and it would be more of a game show and much more exciting. Linda de Mol was of course a great host and the whole show looked very good in Germany. Just the fomat wasn’t perfect enough yet. (It ran on Sat.1 for about 6 episodes and every single episode has had a viewership of quiet exacly 1.6 mio. It was broadcasted on friday nights at 20:15, the final episode was shown last friday.)