Show Enough of a TV Format to Judge It Without Handing Over the Whole Manual

The question that stalls format conversations is usually stated as a matter of nerve. How much do I show them? Framed that way, it has two answers and both are bad. Show too little and the person across the table cannot tell whether your round works, so the meeting ends in politeness and no decision. Show everything and you have handed a production team a manual for a show nobody has agreed to make.

The framing is the problem. Disclosure is not one dial with trust as its setting. It is a set of decisions about a specific judgment you are asking someone to make, and the useful question is narrower than the anxious one: what does this recipient have to decide, and what would they need to see in order to decide it?

Answer that, and the anxiety largely dissolves. You are no longer defending a secret; you are briefing a reviewer. Two things follow. You show the rules that produce the experience, because a format judged without its mechanics is judged on its adjective. And you keep the execution detail for a second, separately scoped conversation, because a production procedure is not evidence about whether the show is any good.

Name the decision before you name the document

"They need to understand the show" is not a brief. It is the absence of one, and it is why so many disclosure arguments go in circles: nobody has said what the recipient is actually assessing.

Three different decisions tend to get bundled together, and they do not need the same material.

The first is the premise. Does this idea have legs for this audience, this slot, this commissioner's slate? That judgment can usually be made from a clear articulation of the proposition plus the shape of a round or two. It rarely requires a walkthrough of the whole episode.

The second is the mechanism. Does the central round generate a real decision, one where a participant's choice changes the outcome? Does an episode develop across its length, or does it repeat the same beat with fresh adjectives? This is the judgment most format conversations are secretly about, and it is the one that cannot be made from a logline. It needs the rules and something that shows them operating.

The third is production. Could a specific team, in a specific market, with a specific budget and schedule, make an authorized version? This is a different exercise with a different audience. Most of what feels risky to disclose — the operational detail that took years to accumulate — belongs here, and almost none of it is needed for the first two judgments.

One recipient often has two of these live at once. A commissioner weighing a pilot may also be weighing a local adaptation. If so, name both decisions, because you will be running two conversations with one person and it is much easier to keep them separate if you say so out loud.

Then check who owns the decision about disclosure itself. The person asking you for "everything" is often not the person authorized to agree what "everything" means. Confirming the review's intended scope with whoever holds that authority is not a bureaucratic step; it is the thing that makes the rest of this work possible.

The rules that create the experience are not the rules that run the studio

Here is a test worth applying to every line of your own material. Would a change to this detail change what a participant decides, or how the round reads to an audience?

If yes, it is a format fact, and a reviewer who cannot see it cannot assess the show. If it only changes who does what on the day, it is a production procedure and belongs in the second conversation.

The line is not the same as "abstract versus specific." A timing rule that alters a participant's choice under pressure is a format fact, and hiding it behind a sentence like "tension builds through the round" makes your own format look thinner than it is. A control-room procedure for cueing graphics is not a format fact, however much operational value it carries — and it is often exactly the know-how you least want to circulate.

There is a version of this mistake that is worse than over-disclosing. It is hiding a material dependency because the dependency happens to contain valuable know-how. If your format only works because a particular rule fires under a particular condition, and that condition is the clever part, then concealing it does not protect the format. It prevents an honest evaluation and produces a decision you cannot rely on. You have not kept a secret; you have sold a stranger a version of the show that does not exist.

A useful way to sort the material is to separate essential mechanics from negotiable elements — the terms the format needs in order to be the same show, as against the terms that can be adapted market by market. A practitioner account published by The Format People describes the FRAPA bible template as covering structure and production phases and drawing roughly that distinction (theformatpeople.com). The template itself is members-only, so that account points at a division without letting anyone outside the membership verify where the line actually falls. Treat it as a way of organising your own thinking, not as an answer.

A worked round, a demonstration, and what each can settle

The way to test your disclosure plan is to build the reviewer's version and then try to answer the assessment questions from it. A fictional format makes this easier to see, because nothing in it is confidential and the arithmetic is checkable.

Call it The Split. It is invented for this article; it is not a real format and nothing in it has been tested or observed. Two players face five rounds with a stake announced at the start of each: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. Each round, both players privately write a claim — a whole number from zero up to the stake. The claims are revealed simultaneously. If they add up to the stake or less, each player takes what they wrote. If they add up to more, the stake is lost and both players get nothing. Rounds one to three are revealed as they happen. Rounds four and five are sealed: written without seeing round four's result, revealed together at the end. Highest personal total wins.

Now a worked walkthrough of the whole thing, with specific claims, invented to make the mechanism inspectable.

A finishes on 44, B on 36.

What does that walkthrough let a reviewer judge? Quite a lot, if the rules are included. They can see that the decision each round is genuinely a decision: claim high and you may lose everything, claim low and someone else's greed can wipe you out anyway. Round two is the instructive one — B claims 9, below half the stake, and still walks away with nothing, because there is no unilateral protection in this mechanic. Caution alone does not save you. They can see that the round reads as a single moment with a consequence, which is what a format needs before it needs anything else. They can see that the sealed tail makes rounds four and five a different proposition from rounds one to three, and they can form a view about whether that is tension or simply a repeated decision with the information removed. That last question is a real one, and it is exactly the kind of thing a reviewer should be allowed to raise.

What can't a walkthrough settle? Whether players behave this way. The numbers above were chosen by an author to demonstrate a rule; they are not a prediction, and they are not evidence about participants under pressure in a studio. A paper walkthrough shows what the rules permit. It cannot show what people do, and it cannot show whether the arc holds across a whole episode rather than a spreadsheet.

That is what a limited demonstration is for, and it has to be specified honestly. Two briefed participants, a table, a stake card and two claim cards, one round staged at a stake of 20, played for a token prize or nothing at all. What it can answer: whether the claim moment reads on camera without narration, how long a reveal takes, whether a viewer can hold the arithmetic while it happens, whether the losing beat lands. What it cannot answer: whether uninstructed players behave anything like people who have been briefed, whether the tension survives five rounds, and whether the format is balanced. A staged run is not evidence of spontaneous behaviour, and it should never be described to a reviewer as though it were.

Both of these versions keep the private simultaneous claim visible, because the assessment depends on it. Remove that rule and you are describing a different show.

Move implementation questions into an agreed fuller exchange

Running the review above will produce a list of questions you cannot answer on a single page, and this is the intended outcome rather than a failure. The list is the agenda for the second conversation.

Some of those questions are unwelcome news for the plan of keeping things tidy: they are not implementation questions at all, and they belong in the current review as soon as they surface. How does the format treat a claim above the stake, and does an invalid entry void the round or get corrected? What happens on a tie? And what does the reveal have to achieve for the round to read — one moment in which a viewer can hold the arithmetic and still register the consequence, without narration to explain it? That is a rule and a requirement, not a staging preference. A reviewer who cannot see what the pause is supposed to accomplish cannot judge the format, and deferring it makes the current version incomplete rather than lean.

The rest are genuinely operational. How is a claim written and held so that neither player nor crew can see it before the reveal? Who verifies the entry? How are the sealed rounds stored without leaking? Who calls the reveal, and what does the crew need in order to stage it? What does the graphics package do when the total exceeds the stake? Some of these need authorized materials, some need named people, some need a production conversation with a calendar in it. None of them need to be in the first exchange, and all of them need somewhere to go.

One nuance is worth carrying through. The credibility of the private claim is a format fact — if the other player can infer your claim from what happens at the table, the game changes completely. But the method by which that privacy is achieved is a production matter. So the first review should be able to say that secrecy is achievable and verified, without describing the mechanism. That is a real distinction, and it is more useful than treating the whole topic as either showable or not.

The trade to explain plainly is this: too little detail and the recipient cannot make a meaningful decision, so the meeting costs everyone a day and settles nothing. Too much and you have exceeded the purpose of this review, which is a cost you may not feel until later.

And be honest with yourself about what a label does. A confidentiality agreement, a password, a header line — these are separate instruments, not disclosure methods. Whether any of them protects anything is a legal question, and it is not one that this kind of planning answers. The reason to show the right amount is that it produces a better decision, not because it substitutes for advice you should be taking separately. Any real exchange of this kind needs authority from the format owner and qualified input on rights and confidentiality.

Check that the reduced account is still honest

The reviewer's version is now a document in its own right, and it has to survive being read by someone who was not in the room when you wrote it.

Read it looking for three things. Missing rules — anything a reviewer would need in order to judge feasibility or the experience, absent because it felt like detail. Contradictions, which usually appear where two versions of the same mechanic were trimmed at different times. And dependencies wearing a costume: sentences that present a condition as though it were a settled solution. "The reveal is timed for tension" is a claim about an outcome. If the timing is what makes the round work, say what the timing has to achieve.

Keep a record of what went out and which questions are still open. This is not bureaucracy either. The version you sent and the version your recipient remembers will drift, and the drift will be in your direction if you let it. A shared list of open items is what keeps the second conversation about production rather than about what anyone agreed was disclosed.

And if, in reading it back, you find that an omitted fact is necessary to judge the format — put it in, or change the scope of the review. What you must not do is compensate for the omission by making a stronger claim. A cleaner sentence about a format whose mechanism has been removed is not a better disclosure; it is a worse one with better manners.

The version you send, and the conversation that follows

So the version you send now contains the proposition, the rules that generate the experience, and enough of a worked round or a specified demonstration for the recipient to see the mechanism deciding something. It names the decision you are asking them to make. It says plainly what the worked material can and cannot establish. It lists the questions that have arisen and identifies which ones will be answered in the next exchange, with whom, and under what authority.

That is a two-part disclosure, and the parts need to be kept visibly separate. The first part is the review. The second part is the fuller operational conversation, which is a different meeting with a different purpose and its own agreements about what is being transferred.

The test at the end is not whether you revealed too much. It is whether the person across the table can now tell you something true about the show — that the round works but the tail does not, that the mechanic is legible but the episode arc is thin, that their team could produce it with two changes you had not considered. If they can, the disclosure was right-sized, whatever it cost your nerves.

If they cannot, the problem is almost never that you showed too little. It is that what you showed them was a description of a show rather than the show's actual engine, and no amount of secrecy will make an unintelligible format worth protecting.

Frequently asked questions

What three decisions are bundled in format conversations?

Premise: does the idea have legs for this audience, slot or commissioner's slate? Mechanism: does the central round generate a real decision and develop across an episode? Production: could a specific team in a specific market, with a specific budget and schedule, make an authorized version? They do not need the same material.

How can a creator tell a format fact from a production procedure?

Ask whether a change to the detail would change what a participant decides or how the round reads to an audience. If yes, it is a format fact and a reviewer who cannot see it cannot assess the show. If it only changes who does what on the day, it is a production procedure and belongs in the second, separately scoped conversation.

What can a paper walkthrough settle, and what can a limited demonstration add?

A paper walkthrough with rules lets a reviewer judge whether decisions are genuine, how consequences read, and whether sealed rounds are a different proposition. It cannot show how players behave under pressure or whether the arc holds across a whole episode. A limited demonstration—two briefed participants, one staged round—can show whether the claim moment reads on camera, reveal timing, arithmetic legibility and whether the losing beat lands. It cannot show uninstructed behavior, five-round tension or balance.

What should the reduced reviewer's version contain?

It should contain the proposition, the rules that generate the experience, and enough of a worked round or specified demonstration for the recipient to see the mechanism deciding something. It should name the decision being asked of them, say plainly what the worked material can and cannot establish, and list open questions that will be answered in the next exchange, with whom and under what authority. The review and the fuller operational conversation should be kept visibly separate.

Do confidentiality agreements or passwords solve disclosure?

No. The body treats confidentiality agreements, passwords and header lines as separate instruments, not disclosure methods. Whether any of them protects anything is a legal question that this kind of planning does not answer. Any real exchange needs authority from the format owner and qualified input on rights and confidentiality.

Further reading

• What Did Your Unscripted Format Test Actually Prove? — When a demonstration or recorded round is offered as proof, this helps you sort which claim the record can actually carry.
• A Competition Uses Secret Choices. Reveal Them Together—or One at a Time? — If you are drafting the sealed reveal rule and wondering whether it changes play, read this on what stays open when information lands.
• Maintain Two Approved Format-Bible Editions: Conditional Text or Separate Files? — For keeping the reviewer's edition and the fuller operational edition from drifting apart, this compares two ways to maintain both.