Just seen this on instagram! Amazing! BBC3 tho... that’s kinda crappy. They don’t even broadcast on TV do they?
This has taken the industry by surprise because BBC3 have no money and have always said before that they don’t want entertainment formats.
It’s difficult to see how WoW are going to make money on this considering how small the margins will be and product endorsement being prohibited.
It also flies in the face of what was widely understood to be Ru/WoW’s strategy to make Drag Race the first global entertainment franchise to sit entirely on an SVoD (like Netflix) once the Viacom deal expires.
Bear in mind that UK Viacom channels (C5, MTV, Comedy Central) would have contractually had first refusal on a UK version. So it’s only on BBC3 because they all turned it down.
Finally, Ru notoriously dislikes travel and on his last couple of visits to the UK has refused to do Drag. Is the BBC3 money really enough to talk him round?
I always assumed the path they’d take would be to do “language” versions that could take Queens from various nations with shared lingo. So more UK, CAN, NZ, Irish, SA and NZ queens on the “Ru” version (filmed in LA) and then a big Ru equivalent to do Spanish language versions, Chinese language version etc.
Very strange for Ru personally to go *this* “local”.
It could be great. But my main concerns are...
- Things looking budget as hell
- Ru not getting the UK cultural references
- Only young contestants (it’s a youth channel)
- BBC compliance sucking any controversy and messiness or difficult subject matter out of it.