Format sale to Italy bonus for TVNZ

Italy's RTI will remakeThe Big Experiment, a show where people try on other lives for a day.

A copy of the New Zealand television show The Big Experiment will be made in Italy - and possibly several other European countries - after TVNZ's first sale of a television show format.

Local reality TV giant Eyeworks Touchdown has sold the format for its shows around the globe for years but the TVNZ sale to Italy's RTI was the first of its type for the state broadcaster.

It opened up a new way for TVNZ to make money.

"[Format sale] has not been a business we've been in before," said TVNZ content licensing manager Leigh Wilson.

"We are looking at a number of different products now that could potentially have format deals."

A format sale is when a company buys the right to make a copy of a television show.

"Essentially, what you are licensing to them is the right to make the programme," said Wilson.

It is different to a programme sale, in which TVNZ traditionally deals, when a company buys an already made programme. Locally made Wonder Dogs, for example, screens in Canada and Fiji and Ghost Hunt in the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Hour-long episodes of The Big Experiment screened on TV One last year. The TVNZ-commissioned four-episode series aimed to challenge stereotypes by radically changing a person's identity for a day, including having a man live as a woman and blindfolding a sighted person.

TVNZ first tried to sell The Big Experiment as a programme sale but Italian broadcaster RTI wanted to buy the format.

To secure the deal, TVNZ compiled a detailed directory, termed the bible, of how to make the show.

In April, TVNZ again sold the format rights under a different deal to a European broadcast company with interests in Poland, Spain and Portugal.

Additional sales were simple, said Wilson, once the bible for a show was created.

"Any further sales for the format are easy to service," said Wilson. "You are getting reasonable money for a relatively easy deal."

She would not give financial details of the deals but said a format sale was more lucrative than a programme sale.

"It has opened up a new market that we weren't necessarily experienced in."