Cannes – Star China’s Vivian Yin, Chief Representative, Star China and VP of Starry Productions, announced the acquisition of MBC’s number #1 rated Format, Infinite Challenge. The 10 year old format won the time slot in Korea for successive years. The acquisition of this format marks an evolution for Star China as they now step into the factual entertainment and reality genres.
“Star China is very excited to bring MBC’s top rated Format Infinite Challenge to Chinese audiences. We are confident that this unique show will be a hit in China. We have a strong history of creating and producing the country’s top rated Formats such as The Voice of China and Sing My Song and look forward to taking Infinite Challenge to that level,” said Yin, “We thank MBC for entrusting Star China with their most prized Format.”
This past weekend, MIPFormats showcased the Infinite Challenge among several hundred top global Format producers, buyers and distributors at the 5th Annual MIPFormats conference. The group studied the unique variety programme and demonstrated how it was turned into a Format programme.
Infinite Challenge is a weekly Korean television, variety entertainment programme, distributed and syndicated by MBC. It is recognised as the first “real-variety” show in Korean television history. The programme is largely unscripted and follows a similar format of challenge-based reality television programmes. This is a comedy show where the funniest six comedians make up a team to carry out any kind of creative challenges which are often silly, absurd, or impossible to achieve; thus the programme takes on the aspect of a satirical comedy variety show rather than a more standard reality or contest program. In earlier episodes, the show’s six hosts and staff would continuously proclaim that, in order to achieve its comedic purposes, the programme was 3-D: Dirty, Dangerous, and Difficult. This makes it the top free-to-air television programme on Saturday evening, and it’s also the most viewed non-drama programme in South Korea every week (excluding special sporting events) since November 2006, with the exception of January 2009, April and May 2010.. It has kept the same scheduled time, since first airing in 2005.
