one of the hottest topics on the agenda at the recent BCWW Conference 2008 in Seoul was that of format licensing. At first blush, it seemed a quite incongruous topic in a market that has neither imported nor exported formats of any kind, but that looks set to change with at least two Western formats set to hit South Korean screens. Endemol’s senior licensing manager commercial & creative affairs Maarten Meijs announced that not only has gameshow 1 versus 100 been licensed into the territory, but also that an Endemol Korea office has been established, headed up by Ryan Lee who simply defined the legitimate licensing experience as “buying into a brand, rather than buying a mere product.” This was echoed by Yong Ryoul Lee from On Media’s production division, which has licensed Project Runway from Fremantle International Distribution. “The format bible tuned out to be full of lots of secret know-hows, localization is the key step of developing the format.” With formats proving an ideal way of selling into countries dominated by homegrown fare, the trend looks set to continue across Asia. And far from formats having had their day, the biggest brands continue to thrive; there seems an endless stream of new ideas on the horizon. And anyone thinking of format copycatting should be careful not to go the same route as a senior executive from ABC Studios in the US who wrote a memo advising careful scrutiny whether licensing foreign formats was necessary or appropriate “often-times what is appealing in the format may be nothing more than a general underlying premise, which, in and of itself, may be no reason to license the underlying property.” The memo was promptly, and embarrassingly, leaked to the international press.