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Europe
Telenovelas and Series:
a great business in paid TV channels |
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Paid
TV channel Romantica
broadcasts only Latin American telenovelas
and the demand is growing. But they
also satisfy their viewers’ passion
for films and series.
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Kathy
Fairbairn, Head of Programs
and Acquisitions of Zone Vision’s
paid thematic channels Romantica
and Club with Eliana Felman,
also from Romantica channel. |
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hen we ask Kathy
Fairbairn –Head of Programs and
Acquisitions of Zone Vision’s
paid thematic channels Romantica
and Club– about what
viewers look for in a telenovela today, this
expert on the genre and its audience says: “Viewers
are becoming more determined. They want something
flatly different and innovative, but yet they
want telenovelas that keep the same usual values.”
Fairbairn is always looking for topics that
have a female bias in telenovelas, films and
series as well, since they also have slots for
these kinds of products. Their audience consists
of 5.7 million viewers. “We try to have
a wide variety of telenovelas. In Romantica
Channel our premise is to have youth, classic
and more modern and different telenovelas,”
she explains and goes on saying: “We have
a growing young audience that consists of female
viewers from 16 to 25 years old. But we also
have an adult and a middle audience that comes
from time to time.”
A
Latin American product
When the channel started working, its main supplier
was Venevision International,
with whom they had an exclusivity agreement
so that they could show telenovelas from this
distribution company only. That exclusivity
agreement has already finished and they are
looking for all kinds of telenovelas and series.
But we must remember that one of the so many
products that they got from that alliance was
La Revancha, a production that had
a great success. Now they are open to different
kinds of productions, but always keeping the
channel’s disposition to show only Latin
American telenovelas and leave the European
ones as a long-term project. That is why Romantica
is starting to carefully look for products outside
Venezuela and they are offering their audience
new innovative productions from Argentina, Mexico,
Colombia and Chile.
Looking
for the ideal telenovela
Fairbairn sees every channel broadcasting telenovelas
as competition, but she emphasizes the difference
by saying: “We have more buying power
and we can get better deals.” However,
the purchasing power does not guarantee a good
product and thus, she affirms that the most
difficult to find are the successful telenovelas,
those which make history and leave their mark.
“We are broadcasting to so many countries
that I’ve learned that what is successful
in Poland may work differently in Bulgaria.
The trickiest is to find something that is successful
everywhere. We prefer telenovelas with a deadline
of 100 to 120 episodes because if they’re
too long, then we have trouble sustaining the
audience.”
| Totally
successful productions |
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two successful telenovelas broadcasted
by Romantica channel were Cuando
seas mía, produced
by TV Azteca and distributed by
Comarex, and Rebecca,
from Univision. “We need telenovelas
that work in many aspects. If they
are very long, then we have trouble
sustaining the audience. We try
to show telenovelas of no more than
100 or 120 episodes,” says
Kathy Fairbairn. |
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