‘Big Brother’ Firm Banijay Hits Out At YouTube Copycats: “It Feels Like The Gloves Are Off”
EXCLUSIVE: Formats powerhouse Banijay, which produces and sells the likes of Big Brother, Survivor and Total Wipeout around the world, has lashed out at social media and YouTube copycat versions of some of TV’s biggest hits.
Lucas Green, the French-headquartered outfit’s Chief Content Officer of Operations, branded copycats “an intrinsic issue facing the industry that we need to have a conversation about,” as they are “hurting the creative economy.”
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In recent years, Green said a wealth of copycat examples have sprung up on the likes of YouTube, TikTok and Twitch from a nascent army of social media personalities, which are “very hard” for their original creators to challenge from a legal standpoint. Green declined to point the finger at specific examples but said he is highlighting the issue in the round, and he is now keen to discuss with fellow industry figures, UK trade body Pact and the new government post election.
“It feels like the gloves are off,” said Green. “Outside of the creative economy and outside of the regulated industry, you are getting content creatives saying, ‘We don’t care about the rules or licenses, let’s just do it.’ As a big content powerhouse, it’s up to us to try and provide some leadership in this realm.”
Green described certain copycats as “sophisticated attempts to build formats and franchises, sometimes quite unashamedly using the names of shows and their architecture or infrastructure, even breaching trademark.” Some are created on a “shoestring budget with a much smaller team” than traditional formats, which can have an impact on below-the-line and contributor duty of care, he added. “We have 25 years experience producing reality shows and know what the pitfalls can be,” said Green.
Green, a formats vet who used to run development for Fremantle, said the plethora of copycats creates a further “twin risk.”
“First you have to ask what this means for the industry in terms of rights and IP, and then you have to think in terms of future audiences and safeguarding their relationship with well-executed, well-regulated longform content,” he added. “If we are not careful the audiences of tomorrow will just want to watch three-second videos that give them instant gratification.”
Sparking debate
Green and the Banijay team will be hoping these utterances kick off a debate within the industry in a similar vein to those sparked by the entrance of the streamers last decade.
The barriers between traditional TV, streaming and YouTube creatives have been breaking down of late. In March, Mr Beast, who is the most subscribed YouTube creator in the world, struck a deal with Amazon for Beast Games, a competition format which, at $5M, will eclipse Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge for the biggest payout in competition history.
Green stressed that Banijay is happy for talent to work across traditional TV and YouTube, pointing to a “great marriage” deal between the super-indie and German creator Knossi, which sees Knossi host a Big Brother spin-off on Amazon-owned Twitch.
“This is really a defense of longform content and the IP model,” he added.
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