CEETV and NATPE are proud to announce the three finalists for the third edition of PITCH & PLAY LIVE! which will take place during the NATPE BUDAPEST INTERNATIONAL market and conference between 25-28 June 2018.

Following a very close pre-selection vote, the three finalists this year are: THE COMMUNITY (Pink, Serbia) - a format in which contestants deal with real issues and everyday situations; IN THE DARK (LNK, Lithuania) - in which seven sighted people are selected to tackle an extreme challenge - to survive ten weeks in complete darkness; and TWINS (Pyatnitsa, Russia) - where each episode tells the story of one pair of twins who decide to change their look and become different.

The three finalist formats will be presented live by their creators in Budapest during the PITCH & PLAY LIVE! session on Wednesday, 27 June. The jury, consisting of Manuela Caputi, Head of International Sales, Mediaset; Marietta Temesvari, Development and Content Strategist, Sony Pictures Television and Kateryna Vyshnevska, Head of Development & Co-production, FILM.UA will review the top finalists and vote for one winner of the competition which will be announced in front of NATPE Budapest International attendees.

This year PITCH & PLAY LIVE's Top 3 formats were selected from among 14 formats from Lithuania, Serbia, Hungary, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and Romania, following the vote of the selection committee which included Damien Porte, VP International Sales, Vivendi Entertainment; Nelly Feld, Head of Sales, Acquisitions and International Relations, Reshet TV; Andrew Sime, VP of Formats, Banijay Rights; Dann Novak, Content Executive, NATPE and Georgi R. Chakarov, President and CEO of TVBIZZ and CEETV.

Each format was evaluated based on three criteria: originality (how original is the idea for the format); universality (does the format idea show flexibility for changes and development) and internationality (does the format have the potential to be sold internationally). The selection committee members reviewed each of the 14 formats and voted in all three criteria with scores from 1 to 5. The final ranking was determined from the accumulated sum of all scores of the five selection committee members.

Here is the full ranking following the vote of the selection committee:

The Community - 59 points

In the Dark - 59 points

Twins - 58 points



Triviador (Show & Game, Hungary) - 57 points

Everything but Ordinary (TV3, Russia) - 57 points

Soyuz Studio (TNT, Russia) - 55 points

Rehab (TV3, Russia) - 54 points

The Heritors (Pyatnitsa, Russia) - 45 points

DNA (NTV, Russia) - 44 points

Brides are in the Kitchen (BES Yapim, Turkey) - 43 points

100 Seconds to a Million (NTV, Russia) - 43 points

Cash or Crash (TNT4, Russia) - 40 points

Makeuppers (Pyatnitsa, Russia) - 39 points

Songs (TNT, Russia) - 38 points