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MAIN Contents • Editorial • Telenovelas Giants • Telenovela Stars • Taking a look at the world of telenovelas Telenovelas, Fiction and Formats • Europe • Asia • Africa • United States: The powerful Hispanic market • Business • Only CEO's • Latin America Writers Seedbed • RUSIA • UKRAINE • Investigation • BUSINESS PEOPLE as actors of the industry |
Series are one of the main
strengths of Fox Latin
America channels. Currently,
Prison Break and 24 are the
top programs of Fox, a network
that reaches 21 million
households all over the United States and
is also one of the most watched channels
in Latin America.
These series have been so successful
that they have designed two new thematic
channels: FX (aimed at men) and Fox
Life, a channel aimed at women that
broadcasts Latin American telenovelas
that have already been tested in their
countries of origin. “It’s such a successful
and promising genre that US
Corporation new networks in the United
States have a prime time only for telenovelas
from Monday to Saturday,” says
Hernán López, Director of Fox Latin
America, who in an exclusive interview
with this magazine in his office based in
Los Angeles remarks that they have not been the first ones to take an interest in
telenovelas, but certainly the ones focusing
in completely American ones. “There are examples in open TV that
show that when the programs are in
reruns – second and third – people watch
them again. Even other paid TV channels
rerun complete telenovelas, such as
Canal de las estrellas, owned by
Televisa Group, and Telemundo
International, property of the giant
NBC.”
López confesses that they are taking
the first steps in the genre and they are
learning as they walk the field, but the
telenovela sales rates worldwide and
news like Betty la fea soon becoming an
ABC comedy have been the starting
point for them to optimistically also
undertake competition.
Thematic audiences Female and male audiences packed separately in specific channels helped with sales and advertising. “I don’t think there are strict audience sections of men wanting to see only men’s or news channels. These are labels that we use to simplify our marketing job because one of the difficulties of a channel like Fox – which is on general entertainment – is that it’s difficult to be defined. The same happens to open TV; so, with more thematic labels, people tend to remember what they must expect from each channel,” explains López.
The spectrum of everything related to program scheduling has also broadened: since FX, channels have started to experiment with European products, whereas after Fox Life, channels have started buying Latin American products and producing their own ones.
Has this content segmentation helped Fox to get a larger income? Yes, it has. In fact, last year there was an excellent growth of 30% in the advertising turnover of paid TV, and our group’s channels had a growth of 55%. Of course Fox already had a high turnover because it is one of the channels with the highest turnover.
Digitalization
The amount of people with cable television and watching TV channels for a longer time is growing every day, making the advertising cake bigger. But this cake is dividing into more paid channels. “The only way we as networks can fight against that is launching more channels in order to go on participating in that increasing cake,” assures the executive.
Digitalization will also bring the possibility of placing more and more channels in the programming schedules. “This will also make each of us program planners have the need to keep a number of channels as well as our share, meaning a higher investment in marketing. However, we have been lucky that, as in general the cake is increasing, our rises in marketing don’t take place at the expense of our profits – we are investing more in marketing, production and program scheduling rights, but our turnover is rising at a good rate and so our utilities keep growing,” says López happily, while he smiles waiting for the good results that will soon be produced by the Latin American telenovela formats, which are already being adapted, like the case of Mesa para tres, owned by Caracol International.
Thematic audiences Female and male audiences packed separately in specific channels helped with sales and advertising. “I don’t think there are strict audience sections of men wanting to see only men’s or news channels. These are labels that we use to simplify our marketing job because one of the difficulties of a channel like Fox – which is on general entertainment – is that it’s difficult to be defined. The same happens to open TV; so, with more thematic labels, people tend to remember what they must expect from each channel,” explains López.
The spectrum of everything related to program scheduling has also broadened: since FX, channels have started to experiment with European products, whereas after Fox Life, channels have started buying Latin American products and producing their own ones.
Has this content segmentation helped Fox to get a larger income? Yes, it has. In fact, last year there was an excellent growth of 30% in the advertising turnover of paid TV, and our group’s channels had a growth of 55%. Of course Fox already had a high turnover because it is one of the channels with the highest turnover.
Digitalization
The amount of people with cable television and watching TV channels for a longer time is growing every day, making the advertising cake bigger. But this cake is dividing into more paid channels. “The only way we as networks can fight against that is launching more channels in order to go on participating in that increasing cake,” assures the executive.
Digitalization will also bring the possibility of placing more and more channels in the programming schedules. “This will also make each of us program planners have the need to keep a number of channels as well as our share, meaning a higher investment in marketing. However, we have been lucky that, as in general the cake is increasing, our rises in marketing don’t take place at the expense of our profits – we are investing more in marketing, production and program scheduling rights, but our turnover is rising at a good rate and so our utilities keep growing,” says López happily, while he smiles waiting for the good results that will soon be produced by the Latin American telenovela formats, which are already being adapted, like the case of Mesa para tres, owned by Caracol International.