TTVNews celebrates its first 20 years by inviting friends and industry colleagues to share their personal experiences over the past two decades. Luis Peraza, founder and managing director of Pyrus Media, answers, “Where were you 20 years ago?”

This 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of TTVNews, a big reason to celebrate for the group, which is consolidating itself as one of the go-to media platforms in the audiovisual industry in Latin America.

And to mark the occasion, we’ve invited friends and colleagues to share their experiences, challenges, and lessons learned over the last 20 years in this industry.

This time, Luis Peraza, founder and managing director of Pyrus Media, answers, “Where were you 20 years ago?”

Where were you 20 years ago?

Twenty years ago, I was at HBO. At that time, I had already lived in Miami for ten years and traveled to Argentina. We started with the original content production project at HBO, and the first project we did on a big scale was the series Epitafios, which we produced in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with Pol-Ka Producciones.

It was a very good first experience for HBO. It went wonderfully from the production point of view, and the series went very well in Latin America. Even though there were many doubts, in the end, the experiment went well. That was in 2004, and from then on, many things happened.

What do you consider to be the future of the industry?

The first event I attended was when I started in the television industry in the 1980s. I was living in Venezuela and working at Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), a very strong network in telenovela production. At that time, a telenovela distribution company called Coral Pictures still existed, but it was just starting.

I went to a Natpe and am just joining RCTV. Natpe was held in New Orleans, and I was overwhelmed by what Natpe was like then, the number of people there, and the size of the booths. It was amazing to see what the market for buying and selling television programs was like then.