What do you do when you own the rights to more than 150 classic game show formats? If you’re FremantleMedia, you bring those formats online. The production company recently launched a game show channel called Buzzr, and through a deal with Google, it will shoot new videos for the channel at YouTube Space LA.
As Variety notes, Buzzr–which is run by FremantleMedia’s digital studio Tiny Riot–has been around since the fall of 2014, when it launched a YouTube version of Family Feud. It’s second series brought Password to the Internet, and it will use YouTube’s Playa Vista facility to shoot new episodes of Feud. Later in 2015, Buzzr will host online renditions of Celebrity Name Game and Body Language. In total, FremantleMedia owns the rights to 154 game shows, and it is eager to bring many of them to YouTube viewers. FreemantleMedia North America CEO Thom Beers claims these shows have “great resonance with younger audiences.”
At the same time, Beers admits that the game shows need a face lift in order to appeal to Buzzr’s target audience. “These old-format game shows are really, really hard to watch,” he noted. To help generate a wider appeal, Tiny Riot has turned to the online video community. For both of Buzzr’s first two series, YouTubers serve as both the hosts and the contestants: Josh Leyva hosts Family Feud, while Steve Zaragoza emcees Password. Episodes hover between eight and ten minutes in length, far shorter than the half-hour game show format that has long thrived on TV.
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While it hopes to bring in younger viewers, Buzzr also plans to cater to the stereotypical game show audience. Beyond its YouTube channel, it will launch Buzzr TV, a channel that will feature reruns of FremantleMedia’s game shows. That hub, which is tentatively planned for a May 31st launch, is aimed at older viewers.
The decision to repurpose game shows for the Internet is a fairly novel idea, but in the end, the classic formats can work on YouTube for the same reasons they work on TV: They’re cheap and easy to shoot, easygoing fare for their viewers, and great fun for their participants. The latest round of Family Feud contestants will get to experience that fun when the new episodes shoot at YouTube Space LA on February 11th.
