Jan Rubes, Head of Acquisitions at Czech Television. The state owned CT 1 and CT 2 together dominate 30% of the market share in the Czech Republic.

y first awareness of telenovelas in the Czech Republic came in the fall of 1999. At that time I was working for the publishing company Mona as Editorial Adviser. As a part of my job, I tracked the circulations of their stable of several magazines. That fall something out of ordinary seemed to be happening with a sudden pike in the sales of one or the other title in our stable –reaching up to 30.000 copies in sales.
I knew that we had not promoted any of those titles to cause such a peak. There did not seem to be anything extraordinary in the editorial contents of those issues either. Then, what was driving up the sales? I pulled out the issues in question, and at some point realized that each one of the three titles carried a cover story of some sort on a telenovela called Esmeralda. And who would not fall in love with Leticia Calderon and Fernando Colunga of Esmeralda?
That is how I proposed my boss then: “We should do a special on this show.” The first print run of 200,000 was sold out in less than two hours. The second print run of as many copies took four more days to sell out.

	Milos Zahradník, Programming Director of Prima TV, the second private channel that compete neck and neck with the state owned CT 1 for the market share –both hovering around 21% to 22%.

Esmeralda and Kassandra, the first successful telenovelas
The spot left open by Esmeralda was filled by Kassandra (Coraima Torres), which was then replaced by Laberintos de Pasión, while doing equally as well on the earlier time slot was Muñeca brava with Natalia Oreiro.
While Leticia, Coraima and Natalia ruled the screen of the most popular network Nova TV, the character of Silvia Navarro was rising steadily along the line in Perla –broadcasted on the rival network Prima. Silvia was also highly popular with Cuando seas mía.
However, no one quite understood the extreme popularity of the South American emotional dramas, especially considering the not so emotional character of the Czechs. Whatever the reason, telenovelas kept coming for the next several years. None reached the audience and ratings of Esmeralda, Kassandra and Muñeca Brava, but they still occupied prominent positions closer to the prime time of the Czech television programming mix. Among them, Carita pintada, Luisa Fernanda, Rosalinda and eventually –as in rest of the world– Yo soy Betty la fea, which took Ana Maria Orozco and Jorge Enrique Abello to every household in the country. Unfortunately, Eco Moda –the continuity of Betty la fea– did not do quite as well and somehow it marked the sudden decline of the telenovela world in the country.

	Katrina Brozová in Pojist Vovna stestí, Nova TV.

Even though Betty la fea and Cuando seas mía did not broadcast around 6 o’clock time slot, but were slotted between 3:30 and 4:30 in the afternoon respectively, they still attracted a huge amount of teenagers who had by then come home from school. As opposed to what one may think, almost half of the Czech viewers of telenovelas and series in general are school-aged kids and teenagers.
During a news conference in 2001, I asked Vladimír Zelezní –then General Director of Nova– that in light of such enormous popularity of the telenovelas, why did not Czech networks produce their own, thus offering a local content? The answer: they were too expensive to produce and they could not afford to commit to that sort of money.
This apparently was no big problem for the state owned Czech Television (CT). During the communism and beyond, they had produced dozens of extremely popular television series that were closer to the hearts and homes of the Czechs. The enormously popular hospital drama Nemocnice na kraji mesta (Hospital on the outskirts of a town) even crossed the border into Germany in its dubbed version and was as popular there.
During the years when telenovelas ruled the ratings of the two private channels Nova and Prima, CT topped the ratings even when they re-ran old series such as Tricet pripadu majora Zemana (Thirty cases of Major Zeman) –an enormously popular detective series during the communism– or Byl jednou jeden dum (Once there was a house). The success of their new productions such as Hotel Herbich, Sípkova Ruzenka (The Sleeping Beauty) and Cetnické humoresky against the most popular telenovelas was not something you could ignore.

	Klara Jandová and Tomás Kreicír in Rodinná pouta, local production, Prima TV. .

Their own productions
Now a bit more established and feeling financially more secure, Prima and Nova realized the potential of original Czech soaps. Last year in spring, almost simultaneously, they announced their intentions of producing their own original series. Nova did back to back Pojist’ovna stestí, (Insuring Happiness) Redakce (Editorial) and On je zena (He is a Woman). While Nova’s series were standard 13 episode productions, Prima embarked upon broadcasting ambitious long running telenovelas containing more than a hundred episodes: Rodinná pouta (Family Ties). Enormously successful, Rodinná is now in its second season of 100 more episodes, with the potential of it becoming never ending series such as The Bold and the Beautiful.

The fall of Latin American telenovelas
Once again, CT shied away from its competitors for eclectic reasons: the commercial channels discovered the Reality Shows. The Czech version of Pop Idol had almost half of the country watching the final episodes through its two seasons. On August 14th, Prima began broadcasting its own version of The Big Brother, VyVoleni (Selected) –an original format licensed from Hungary– and on the 28th, Nova launched the Czech version of original The Big Brother.

	Petr Dvorák, Managing Director of Nova TV, the most popular and most watched of the network channels in the Czech Republic with an average market share of 44%. . .

Something else began to happen to further demote the Latin American telenovelas. The popular U.S. teen series grabbed the interests of the school crowd as soon as they got home. Buffy the vampire slayer, Roswell, Smallville, Dawson’s Creek, Everwood, Gilmore girls and even re-runs of Beverly Hills 90210 have bumped the telenovelas down to the morning and early afternoon slots. Not until too long ago, the two networks broadcasted between six and eight telenovelas every day. The current programming has only three, La duda, Siempre te amaré and Anastasia.
No one can say for sure whether tele-novelas will reach their former glory and popularity in the Czech Republic. Currently, there is every indication that they will probably not. But I can see someday a co-production between two countries, as in the case of the United States and Russia together producing Poor Anastasia.
Another example is last year’s Nova’s Rdakce –the Czech version of the original Spanish series Periodista. The Czech Republic has a long tradition of making quality movies and television programs, and they have wonderful facilities and professionals available to offer the best production ground at a reasonable price. So why not telenovelas? When I asked Jan Rube? – CT’s Director of Acquisition– whether they would ever consider a co-production, he answered: “I don’t think so, because we do our own series. But I can imagine commercial channels doing it. They have realized that it’s a very good investment to do local production with local actors, in which they may buy the format or adapt the original story to the local environment.”