Some of the biggest players in Spanish-language TV – including Mexico’s Televisa and Venezuela’s Cisneros Group – are looking to the U.S. as their next growth frontier. Both companies believe they can expand their businesses by importing Spanish-language hits to the already-crowded American programming marketplace, reports Variety’s Cynthia Littleton.

Televisa already has tried this approach with several projects. Lifetime drama “Devious Maids” is based on a Televisa format, as is the upcoming ABC Family drama “Chasing Life.” Nickelodeon’s TeenNick experimented in 2012 with a remake of a Televisa soap, “Hollywood Heights,” which was programmed like a novela, with episodes airing five nights a week.

“This is part of the globalization of Televisa,” Michael Garcia, chief creative officer of Televisa USA and a former development executive at HBO and 20th Century Fox TV, told Littleton. “The biggest growth market for Televisa is the U.S.”

Televisa owns a sizable stake in Univision, and it’s the Spanish-language network’s major supplier of programming. Per that deal’s terms, Televisa cannot produce Spanish-language programming for any non-Univision outlets in the U.S. But that leaves the company with plenty of options at a time when general-market buyers are hungry to attract Hispanic viewers.

Cisneros Group, under the new leadership of CEO Adriana Cisneros, is just starting down this path. Last month, it changed the name of is distribution operations to Cisneros Media Distribution from Venevision International. It’s also partnering with Bungalow Media to develop both English- and Spanish-language programs.

Brief Take: ​Borders and language barriers are becoming increasingly irrelevant as content producers look to grow their businesses.

Read More: Variety

[Image courtesy of Variety.]

Tags:


  Save as PDF