Television products that reach between 30 and 40 rating points deserve a coverage by graphic media. Teleseries, as telenovelas are called here, and “realities” are getting incredible ratings. El Mercurio newspaper, the most important and traditional in Chile, analyzed reality and decided to create a serious and critical analysis column for these products last year. TVMAS interviewed Jimena Villegas Berrios, show editor, about the impact that these contents spreading has on graphic media.
What impact does a genre like the telenovela, which is an importan t part in national industry and export product, have on graphic media, especially on El Mercurio?
The impact is enormous, since spectators go from one media to another to follow their stories, characters and news. As a result, the local telenovela has had p resence on graphic media since its birth. This is due to the impact it had and which has not decreased. Last year Canal 13 showed up again to compete with the leader TVN Canal 7. This stregthned local production since a fierce competition was created again, and today Chile has better resources and technical facilities to make television exclusively. There is also a search for better formulae to make telenovelas which has made people feel these pro ducts as theirs and reach 30 and 40 share points. How can not you pay attention to a society that expresses itself and communicate through television?, adds the journalist, and when programmes get so massive and strong arrivals they are being watched. And if they are watched is because they are accepted. The next day, they follow up television look in graphic media.

	Amor Descarado, successful national production adapted by Telemundo.

Here comes a question, is the film industry taking advantage of this? But the answer is “No”. “The only channel interested for some time was TVN but it has left it aside. The independent film industry survives. Our film industry is good, but it requires marketing. And part of its marketing strategy should be to have well-known stars. Television can do that.
To quote experiences as Radio Televisión Española, national channel that has been interested and found resources to develop film industry together with television, was inevita-ble to think of Televisa, Mexico which have interesting tries as well as independent producers such as the recently released film Zapata, that includes the singer and telenovela actress, Lucero and the singer Alejandro Fernández among other popular stars from TV. Argentina is another country that is doing this, and the TV independent production companies, Pol-ka, Promofilm, Ledafilms, Patagonik Films, Cuatro Cabezas are making films and even Telefe channel tries it successfully. Countries that have a clear vision of the advantage of the television and film industries “assets”.

*This is a summary from the extended interview about Films and TV. The complete text is available only in TVMAS magazine in Spanish.