Entertainment and Reality
Entertainment & Reality
ITV Entertainment & Reality is home to some of the nation’s most loved shows. It features a diverse range of globe travelling returnable brands from large scale Saturday night hits to the best in class reality and irresistible must see events.
Alongside returning series, we also commission must see events such as The National Television Awards, The BRIT awards, The Royal Variety Performance, Together At Christmas Royal Carols, Soccer Aid for Unicef and An Audience With.
BRIEFS
In terms of tone, we are always on the lookout for shows with humour, warmth, joy, relatability and universality. Audiences are asking for authenticity and fresh stories across all content. As ever, Talent remains important throughout the ITV portfolio and we are constantly asking who does the audience want to spend time with?
Weekend Entertainment
We are on the lookout for main event pieces, new refreshed ideas that compliment our successful brands like Britain’s Got Talent, The Masked Singer, The 1% Club and The Voice. New ideas here have to appeal to all generations, must contain humour and usually have ensemble casts and/or big talent at their heart. Audiences want to be celebrated, they want surprises and revelation, life changing moments, big live energy, play along, drama and connection - they don’t want a passive watch.
In terms of pre and post main events, we are always developing in this space but we also have a lot of returning successful brands, such as Catchphrase, The Floor, Wheel Of Fortune, Romesh Ranganathan’s Parents Evening, Bullseye, and The Assembly. [We are also open to surprises, for example The Assembly came to us from a company we hadn't worked with and they did a great job of making the case for the format being perfect for ITV, and they were right.]
When it comes to Quiz and Game, any new ideas have to feel very different to our current winning slate which includes titles such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win and The Chase brand. In order to feel like the next game changing quiz, we need it to be original and an absolute must-watch in this space?
Example recent Entertainment commissions: The Box, Golden Elevators, Celebrity Sabotage, Holey Moley, Name That Tune and I’m A Celebrity…Wild Frontier.
Reality
In the reality space we are looking for fast turn around propositions. This is what we are known for and our biggest success reflects the audience appetite for this with titles such as I’m A Celebrity, Love Island and Big Brother. We know the audience enjoys having a hand in steering the narrative, engaging with and influencing the game. The nature of these shows living and unfolding in real time provokes a shared conversation, cross platform engagement and a fear of missing out. The premise is key, what are we testing, what’s the game or the challenge? We aren’t looking for more dating or survival formats.
For ITV1 ideas need to be broad and relatable, casts can be celebrity or non celebrity.
For ITV2 ideas need to be younger-skewing something that we can sample and scale up with success.
Live or ‘As Live’ Events
We have returning events like The BRITs, Soccer Aid for UNICEF, The Royal Variety Performance and The National Television Awards. We are always looking for more standout moments like these. We are interested in big one off stunts that need to feel must-see and appeal crossgeneration. In terms of music we are well covered with The BRITs and An Audience With and are only interested in big name music specials with broad appeal. We aren’t currently looking for more award shows.
Competition Formats
We don’t currently have a typical competition format on ITV and are interested in what this might look like. What is the next take in this area? It needs to be broad, relatable, returnable, and we are open to either a celebrity or non celebrity cast. As with all content it needs to serve both ITV1 and ITVX, but worth noting we don’t have 8pm slots so commissions need to be able to stand out weekdays at 9pm and crucially compete with the scripted shows it will be against, plus have the prize and personality to match. We don’t want anything that feels derivative in this space.
Authored Documentary
We don’t commission huge volumes here and are only interested in ideas with big talent, telling new stories. A recent commission in this area is Freddie Flintoff: Understanding Tourette’s.
ITV2
On ITV2 it’s all about keeping reality fans engaged with a steady drumbeat of titles which drive ITVX viewing. New commissions in this space include, reality series, The Princess Diaries, Sam & Pete Dying to Look Good alongside evergreen hit TOWIE.
AD FUNDED ENTERTAINMENT
We are keen to work with brands to create the very best shows and content for our platforms. This should be done in partnership with ITV’s in-house creative commercial team BE Studio. Any producers wishing to explore ad funding should first talk to the programme commissioning team and BE Studio before approaching any brand directly.
Examples of ITV AFE’s include Win Win with Postcode Lottery, Cooking with the Stars (Marks & Spencer) and The Joy of Pets (Inspiring Vet Care).
HOW TO PITCH
We can only accept submissions from production companies.
Contact: Entertainment.Commissioning@itv.com