Transition industry, state genre

The telenovela, tira, teleserie or culebrón, you call it, has a successful story from the outset, nearly 50 years ago. The telenovela appeared by the time the Hanna Barbera Studios broadcast The Flintstones at the primetime, and it overthrew the merry characters of this cartoon. When the boom of American primetime series took over TV screens, the telenovela was there to struggle for a place, and eventually won, thanks to the public’s preference. Today, it competes head -to- head with entertainment programs and reality shows, offering suitable alternative panoramas for the advertising and merchandising industries, record companies, show business, communications, news and entertainment shows, among many other potentials yet to be discovered and explored.
Though not without difficulties, the telenovela in Asia has managed to show its performance capacity. China is starting to buy this product again, whereas Korea and Thailand show reluctance to enter the market, but are determined to produce telenovelas themselves. Italy is striving to offer a certain continuity, and Spain is regaining confidence on the genre.
Different markets show different attitudes, thus making strategies even more difficult. Big studios, which have once tried entering the business, and failed -such as Warner searching for support with Marte TV, in Venezuela-, are today giving it a second try. Disney Studios and Sony have already become part of the business, and the powerful USA TV chain NBC, with the take-over of Telemundo, made a good start three years ago. In addition, competence has an incentive to work harder because the offer has become bigger than the demand.
In an attempt to contribute to the diffusion of this genre representing Latin America throughout the world, TVMAS presents this document in the shape of a publication called ONLY TELENOVELAS, a combination of the two universal languages: Spanish and English. We hope you stay with us in our struggle to keep up this initiative, which, in short, offers a spectrum of the powerful business of telenovelas around the world.