Television is only as strong as its programming. The use of program formats has slowly but surely developed into an important component of the television industry. This paper examines the surprising gap between the constantly growing, multi-billion-dollar trade of program formats and their unclear and contradictory legal treatment. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I look at the characteristics of both the product at hand and the markets it serves to examine possible justification for legal protection. I argue that the use of the term \u22TV format\u22 is misleading and that a clear separation between the unpublished and published stages of the format creation process is necessary. Next, I show that contract law and internal industry mechanisms create an overall efficient, unpublished format market where no additional legal protection is needed. In the international trade market of published program formats, however, I conclude that a clearer legal approach offering better protection is justified.
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机译：电视只有其节目制作能力。节目格式的使用已经缓慢但肯定地发展成为电视行业的重要组成部分。本文探讨了程序格式的不断增长，数十亿美元的交易与它们不明确和自相矛盾的法律待遇之间的惊人差距。通过跨学科的方法，我研究了现有产品及其市场的特征，以检验法律保护的可能依据。我认为使用\ u22TV format \ u22一词会产生误导，因此有必要在格式创建过程的未发布和已发布阶段之间进行明确区分。接下来，我将展示合同法和内部行业机制创建了一个整体有效的，未发布的格式市场，其中不需要其他法律保护。但是，在已发布程序格式的国际贸易市场上，我得出结论认为，采用更清晰的法律方法提供更好的保护是合理的。
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