RTBF Creative announces new reality formats for the global market

RTBF Creative, the distribution arm of Belgium Public media service RTBF, has launched three new formats "The Comedy Expedition Challenge", "Meet My Family Wedding Dress" and "Blind Conviction" to global buyers during MIPCOM. These new titles follow the success of "5-stars Village," which is in its four season, and the well performance of "The Yurt Celebrity Green Challenge" in Belgium. "We want to keep big entertainment to target the young, adult and family audience, so we are launching three big formats," commented Sandrine Roustan, General Director at RTBF. She explained RTBF creates new formats because they need them for their own platforms, so they need also to keep the rights, but also because the public services needs new topics in order to be close to the young adults and the family target. "We also create new formats because we want to exist on the international market as a voice. We want to count in the European market first and maybe outside the European market. It's important for us to have a voice on the market," Roustan asserted.

Last year, RTBF co-produce "The Yurt Celebrity Green Challenge" with Why Why Productions. In the Reality TV show, three celebrities who don’t specially pay attention to the environment will spend five days and four nights together in The Yurt, far from their daily comfort. "It was a big success in 2022 on Tipik channel," said Roustan, who also confirmed a second season of the show.

This year, RTBF Creative is launching "The Comedy Expedition Challenge", also co-produced with Why Why Productions. In this brand-new entertainment format combining humour and extreme adventure, two stand-up comedians have three days and two nights to hike through an unspoil wilderness and reach the final beacon.

The new second RTBF format is "Meet My Family Wedding Dress", a new show where three future brides choose to get married in a family dress, a precious legacy that transcends generations. "Now, a lot more people choose to make a wedding in a family dress, the dress of the mother, the grandmother, or another person in the family. The goal is to wed in this wedding dress, but with an upcycling thing", said Francois Jadoulle, Responsable Development content at RTBF.

The last RTBF format is "Blind Conviction - Only ideas matter", where two political debaters will have to convince and develop their ideas without knowing the identity of their opponent. "As public service media we air politic shows debates and they can be boring, so we create this format to have debates only about the ideas and not about the people who are in these debates," explained Jadoulle.

RTBF portfolio also includes the very popular format "5-Star Village" which is in fourth season in Belgium. It's a battle between six celebrities from six villages, where the guests have one day to convince the other five that their favorite village is the best. "It performed very well on RTBF and we have four seasons," he said.