Ernesto Ramirez
VP Operations & Entertainment
TV Azteca / Comarex
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What are the advantages / difficulties of selling telenovelas to Western European countries?
The current advantage is that it is a booming product, and it is "trendy." The risk is that not all people know about telenovelas, so the buyers can be mislead and make a wrong choice of a telenovelas. In this case, if it doesn't perform well it can close slots. The difficulty is that buyers believe in the product, and that they experiment with it. It has been a proven success in Latin America for the past 40 years, and it has been copied by the Koreans and the Indians.
Do you sell ready-made telenovelas or fiction formats to Western Europe? We are selling both. It all depends on what the budget of the client is, sometimes they prefer to produce to have a more local version, and of course this is far more expensive than using a canned version. Currently we are launching our format area, and we are having an excellent response since we are including produced and not produced telenovelas as well as game shows, and series.
Can you give us examples of successful telenovelas that are on the air in Western European countries? We have "La Hija del Jardinero" ("The Gardener's Daughter"), and we are doing deals right now on "Amor sin Condiciones" ("Unconditional Love") and "Amores Cruzados" ("Crossing Hearts").
Do you have projects in co-production in Western European countries?
Not for the moment, there are some on the pipeline but nothing is clear yet. We believe that our format "Lo que Callamos las Mujeres" ("Women's Stories") will be one of the first. Since these are stand-alone episodes, it helps the producers to "test" with only 13 and not commit to a long series.
Do you participate in Reed Midem's Telenovelas Screenings? What do you expect from this event?
Yes, and we also participated last year. In 2005, we believe it wasn't such a good market since it was the first, and Reed Midem didn't make a lot of effort informing buyers about it. With the second edition this year, we expect to see more buyers screening material, and thus helping us to have a more efficient Mipcom. We hope it helps the telenovelas genre, which sometimes is mistaken with Dramas or Soaps. To give an example, a Korean 22 hour series is a Drama, or a French series like St. Tropez is also Drama. A Soap is the long running US shows ("The Young and the Restless", "General Hospital ", "The Bold and the Beautiful", etc.) or the Italian or French productions. A telenovelas is a dream story for everyone in the audience, that will end in a certain number of episodes, and that it has in most cases, a happy ending.
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