Hey YA

Demand for young-adult programming is on the rise. But what is a young adult? How far does the age range for that demographic extend and what do they want to watch?

for t ext the B

By Karolina Kaminska

There has been a multitude of hit shows for the young-adult (YA) audience over the last 25 years or so, from 1990s drama Dawson’s Creek, 2000s shows The O.C, Skins and Gossip Girl and 2010s series Pretty Little Liars and The Vampire Diaries, to Euphoria and The Summer I Turned Pretty in this decade.

Despite the fact young adults are spending more and more of their time on social media, demand for series and films for the demographic is increasing, disproving the notion that young people don’t watch TV anymore.

However, producing YA content can be difficult and even risky since there is no clear-cut definition of what the age of a young adult actually is.

“When we say upper preschool, we know that means four- to seven-yearolds. When we say lower preschool, we know what that is. When we say adult drama, we know what that is. The YA space is the only one that is still a grey area,” says Monica Levy, co-chief of distribution at Parisbased Federation Kids & Family and Federation Studios.

“It seems like we have broken off into different groups of YA –there’s a young YA, which would be people around 13 to 18 years old or teenagers, and then we have an older YA that would be those around 19 to 30, where you’re not really hitting the big drama demographic because they [the YA audience] want content where they can see themselves on screen.”

With YA covering such an expansive age range, which expands even further between different producers and networks, Levy highlights an issue in creating programming that is suitable for all ages in the demo, since a show with violence and sexual content that would be suitable for an 18-year-old would certainly not be suitable for a 13-year-old. This is particularly troubling since teens, and sometimes even younger children, have a tendency to want to watch content for older viewers.

“Kids who used to watch animated shows and live-action series aimed at children are migrating very quickly towards the younger YA demographic, so there’s a kind of battle between the consumers who want to watch something that’s not appropriate for them and the television stations that try to give them something that is ageappropriate for them. The YA bubble is growing and it’s like an unknown playground we’re all trying to explore and find our way through,” Levy says.

“The 12-18 age range is the hardest audience to attract. What we try to do is make high-level dramas for them like we would for adults, with the same budget, energy and writing that goes into it. You have to make it sexy for them, but age-appropriate, and that’s one of the biggest challenges as a producer.”

Content on Federation’s YA slate includes Netflix teen drama Baby, produced by Italy’s Fabula Pictures. The series, which ran for three seasons between 2018 and 2020, follows the double lives of two teenagers who are students by day and prostitutes by night.

From Norway’s Einar Film for Viaplay is Delete Me, about a highschool student whose sex tape gets leaked at school, threatening to jeopardise the future careers of herself and her synchronised swimming partner. A second season, which follows a new story and characters, is currently in the works.

At MipTV in April, Federation will showcase Shake, which was produced by Lucky Red for Italian pubcaster Rai. Inspired by Shakespeare’s Othello, the series tells the story of a group of teenagers caught up in a love triangle.

Over in Italy, Giorgio Scorza,

CEO of animation studio Movimenti Production, which was acquired by Banijay Kids & Family last year, recalls the confusion he experienced when trying to distinguish between the target age groups for YA content and adult animation.

Movimenti produced Netflix adult animation Tear Along the Dotted Line and is currently producing follow-up series This World Can’t Tear Me Down Despite Tear Along the Dotted Line having an age rating of 15 on Netflix in the UK, Scorza’s experience has led him to understand that YA content should be less risqué than adult animation. This would then put the YA demo at the lower end of the age range suggested by Federation’s Levy.

“When we talked to Netflix about Tear Along the Dotted Line, we called it a YA series, but Netflix said ‘No, this is adult animation, this is not YA.’ We didn’t know the difference since the show was going to be for viewers aged around 14- or 16-plus,” Scorza says.

“There is a feeling that YA is the next step after kids’ entertainment, whereas adult animation is an adult series that’s just made with animation. The crazy thing is, I couldn’t do something like what I do in animation in live action for the same target. In adult animation, you can talk about almost everything because it’s sarcastic, exaggerated, hyperbolic and people won’t believe it’s true.

“YA is more like when a Disney teen star goes outside Disney – it’s the Miley Cyrus path. It’s your perfect friend from Disney who can now talk about sex and violence because finally they are becoming a woman.”

Also acquired by Banijay Kids & Family last year, UK prodco Kindle Entertainment produces drama for adults, young adults, kids and families, with a specialist focus on four-quad content – meaning shows aimed at the four core demographics of males, females, people over 25 and people under 25.

One example of a Kindle-produced four-quad drama is miniseries Treasure Island, adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel of the same name. With an all-star cast including Elijah Wood and Donald Sutherland, the series targets individual adults as well as families.

Kindle MD Melanie Stokes says she sees more opportunities for four-quad drama than family and YA content because the former has such a wide scope, although the prodco is still developing programmes specifically

“YA is like when a Disney teen star goes outside Disney – it’s the Miley Cyrus path. It’s your perfect friend from Disney who can now talk about sex and violence because finally they are becoming a woman.

Giorgio Scorza Movimenti Production

aimed at both young adults and families. Like Federation’s Levy, Stokes splits the YA demographic into two areas. The lower end is what she calls “clean teen/soft YA” and targets kids as young as eight up until the age of 14 or 15 at its broadest, with 13 being “the sweet spot.” According to Stokes, content for this demo can tackle certain “bad” subjects like crime, but can’t have things like sex, nudity, bad language or drugs.

One of Kindle’s shows that falls into this category is BBC and Netflix teen thriller The A List, about a girl who arrives at a summer camp that turns into a twisted nightmare. Stokes notes that the series attracted eight-yearolds in addition to older teens.

The upper end of the YA demo, according to Stokes, then starts at around age 14 and goes up to around age 30, with 18 being the sweet spot for this “edgier” content. Stokes puts shows like Kiss Me First, which Kindle produced for Channel 4 in the UK and Netflix, into this bracket.

Written by Bryan Elsley, who also penned Skins for Channel 4’s youth-skewing network E4, Kiss Me First is a thriller about a lonely young woman hooked on a virtual reality game who befriends a party girl who leads her into a world of new thrills and dark secrets.

“Skins and Kiss Me First are quite transgressive and shouldn’t really be watched by younger teenagers, but it’s what they want to watch without their parents knowing. Probably the sweet spot would be 18, but you would get teens as young as 14 watching,” Stokes says, adding that older adults would also watch it for the “nostalgia factor.”

Lille in March that he couldn’t pinpoint an exact age for the YA demo but defined young adults as those who are trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives.

“I truly don’t know [what the specific age is],” he said. “It’s mostly a therapeutic journey for them –these are viewers who treat this as a journey of discovering themselves and exploring who they are and what culture they want to be part of.” generations are evolving is incredible. It’s very difficult to see the young-adult demographic as one because when you’re 15, you’re not the same person as when you’re 17,” he said.

Leshem also warned against a misconception that young adults these days are only interested in shortform content and shows they can binge on-demand.

“People always tell us when we pitch a show for young adults that is one-hour in length that young adults have an attention span of eight seconds. That’s not true. If you read all the research, you’ll realise it’s not that they have an attention span of eight seconds, but that you have 10 seconds to grab their attention. And if you do grab their attention in 10 seconds, they can go for hours,” he said.

Advising producers on making YA content, Dhab added: “The most important part is to put yourself at the same level. For a long time, YA and teenage programming has been made and looked at from an older point of view. It doesn’t mean you have to be a young adult to write a series for that audience, but you have to put yourself on the same level and treat your characters as if they were adults. They’re just adults with some things to figure out.

“Basically, every misconception the public has about young adults is a freaking misconception. We have a few studies going around and what comes out of them is never what you expect or what you think you should expect of that generation.”

Dhab dismissed claims that young adults spend all their time on social media, blaming the misconception on execs who take things at face value and fail to realise what their teenagers are doing behind the scenes.

“YA content is essentially a coming-of-age story. We can all remember those first experiences, so there’s something very pleasing about watching it. I read a review of [HBO teen drama] Euphoria and the journalist, who was in her 40s, said it was the only thing she was watching because it was so authentic and she felt she had an insight into this new generation, but it had enough of those points we can all remember [from our youth],” the exec says.

Federation’s Levy also highlights Euphoria’s appeal to older adults. “Euphoria changed the YA space for everybody because the adults watch it too,” she says. “We try not to let our kids who are too young watch it, but teenagers watch it. It was a phenomenon worldwide and has opened the doors for other similar shows.”

Ron Leshem, who created and wrote the original Israeli version of Euphoria and exec produced the HBO adaptation, said at Series Mania in

“People also told us that linear and appointment viewing were dead. They are not dead. Young adults were coming to HBO at 21.00 on a Sunday to watch Euphoria.”

Different broadcasters also have different age ranges for the young adults they serve. Alberto Fernandez, digital content and transmedia director at Spanish pubcaster RTVE, puts his target demo at 18-45, while Karl Warner, head of youth and digital at Channel 4, says his core target demo is 16-24, with a wider target of 16-34.

Back in France, Sened Dhab, VP of streaming drama for France Télévisions, defines the broadcaster’s core YA demo as 18-25, with a broader range of 15-30. Dhab also spoke at Series Mania, alongside Leshem, where he described young adults as those who are at the age of sexual consent – which is 15 in France – up until the typical time they start to settle down and start a family, although he acknowledged that can differ from person to person.

“The speed at which these

“Executives look at their kids on TikTok and decide that’s what they need to do [to reach them],” he said. “Of course they’re spending a lot of time on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat and consuming that short type of content, but they’re also watching [HBO drama] The Last of Us and [Netflix supernatural comedyhorror] Wednesday and engaging with those stories.”