There are many Spanish television programs that have something in common. Although they are broadcast on different channels and belong to different formats. Some are reality television (, Traitors), others are called talent shows (The voice) and the vast majority of them belong to the genre of contests (The Floor, God you!, ball game, All for you, 1 contra 100, The connection). But all of them are television formats created in the Netherlands that are successful around the world.
According to the , formats of Dutch origin represented 11% of all global television commissions in the 2023-2024 season, which places the country as the third most important in this sector of the audiovisual market, after the United Kingdom and the United States. Taking into account that Anglo-Saxon series dominate exports, this leaves the Netherlands as the great creator of entertainment formats unscripted. It is the term in English that defines non-fiction proposals, such as contests, talent shows and reality television.
Big Brother It is the program that changed everything, just before the euro arrived. John de Mol and his partners devised a contest in which six people locked themselves in a luxurious house for a year until one of them won a million florins. It premiered in 1999 and just a year later it was already part of Telecinco’s programming, with Mercedes Milá at the helm.
Since then, the television industry of a country of 18 million inhabitants (just over a third of Spain’s) has managed to export dozens of successful formats. And John de Mol has amassed a fortune that currently exceeds 1.8 billion euros, according to the magazine Forbes.
The Netherlands phenomenon is something that Sandra Hilster, Netherlands executive director of , has witnessed. His company is the large conglomerate that unites international production companies such as Endemol and Shine. Their Spanish subsidiary also includes local companies such as Cuarzo, Gestmusic and Zeppelin, among others. “Before Big Brother“We were already an industry with a lot of initiative and power of local creation,” he told EL PAÍS through a video call.
“To be able to export so many ideas, you first have to dare to invest in the creative process. That means financing a structure that dares to try and fail without focusing only on what gives immediate benefit. I think this part is often neglected,” explains the executive. For her, the way to compete with the new screens (social networks, platforms of streaming) is by creating “large formats that can be seen around the world and that do not age.”
Carmen Ferreiro is director of entertainment programs at Atresmedia, where programs such as The Floor, ¡Salta! y The voice and the second season of is about to premiere ball game. She and her team are in charge of reviewing international proposals in markets such as MIPTV, which recently . Another way to find ideas is through their personal relationships with foreign distributors, who directly propose their new formats, or through the global reports prepared by consultancies such as “The Netherlands is a not very large market that can produce at a very competitive price, so you can launch and test very easily and with great frequency and see what works,” Ferreiro explains to this newspaper.
Another factor that makes the country a benchmark is the circular structure of its industry, says the Atresmedia executive. “One of the most powerful distributors, Talpa (also founded by John de Mol), owns several television networks in its country, so it can create and test formats without depending on anyone,” he highlights.
Eternal formats
And God you! y Big Brother They have been broadcast for so many years and in so many countries, it is because the Dutch industry strives to establish solid foundations “in its mechanics, its tone and its way of narrating things,” says Hilster. “In addition, it is not just about creating new ideas and letting them go; we continue working on them to constantly renew them,” he adds. Both Ferreiro and Eduardo Escorial, director of Entertainment and News at Mediaset Spain, agree that the Dutch make an effort to protect their brands, but leaving freedom for them to adapt to the local taste of each country. “Their distributors understand that each market is a world and their main interest is that the brand works in as many countries as possible. We do the adaptation work together and the final result is agreed upon. This also benefits its creators, because they take away a new development that can be useful in markets similar to ours,” comments the executive.
The voice is the best example of this. In Spain, it began broadcasting on Telecinco in 2012 before jumping to Antena 3 six years later. To its initial premise, that of blind auditions, successive changes in mechanics have been added, such as the theft of contestants from a coach to another or the blockages. These are ideas that have emerged in versions from different places, since it has been adapted to more than 70 countries.
Precisely, the cultural shock causes exceptions to exist such as that of Traitorsthe most watched format in the world at the moment, which triumphs, in addition to its country, in the most competitive markets: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland and Canada, among others. On the other hand, it did not work in Spain, neither on HBO Max nor in its jump to Antena 3. “Latin countries are where it is most difficult, perhaps because they reject that element of betrayal that the game poses,” analyzes Ferreiro and confirms Hilster, who detects that the dating shows and all formats related to love and seduction are more to the taste of Spanish-speaking communities.
Seller history
Another factor that has made the Netherlands an unexpected leader in the sector is that “they are very good sellers,” say both Mediaset and Atresmedia. “They are very good at creating but also with everything that comes after: they bet on their own ideas, they take the risk of being the first to release them and immediately put them on the international market with great marketing. A strategy that has been working for years and generating a great return,” says Escorial. “They know how to wrap their products very well,” agrees Ferreiro.
“We are a small country that has always had to undertake, go abroad, collaborate among ourselves and with others and learn languages. We already did it centuries ago with our ships traveling to Asia. Only now we do business with television formats instead of spices,” concludes Sandra Hilster.
