TTVNews celebrates its first 20 years, inviting friends and industry colleagues to share their personal experiences over the past two decades. Zasha Robles, CEO at Spiral International, 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, Zasha Robles, CEO at Spiral International, answers “where were you 20 years ago?”

Where were you 20 years ago?

When TTVNews started in 2004, 20 years ago, I was working in Etcétera. My whole professional career has been in Etcétera, and I was working in the dubbing area of the company. I was also starting the expansion of the company towards Europe and the distribution area.

What was your first industry event?

In 2004, my first event, I was working for Etcétera, our company, which is already 50 years old; my parents started it. I am the second generation, and my first event was to go to Natpe when I was seven or eight years old, but at that time, I was going to collect toys, not content; I was not going to work. It was in the 80s. My first market as an executive, that was much more recent in 1997.

Where do you see the most significant growth opportunity in the industry?

What an interesting question, isn’t it? Because I think it’s the big question post COVID, in our industry, we’ve always had a next, a next stage, whether it’s in the form of technology, whether it’s in the form of rights, whether it’s in the form of prospective business. From radio, we’ve gone to television, to the home video business, to the cable business, to the .com movement, and finally, we landed in the Video On Demand VOD world.

But now, what’s next for us? Nobody knows, I feel like we have found out that the earth is flat and we have reached the end of the horizon, the end of it. In 2024 we practically have the expedition to find out that it is round again, hopefully this is just another cycle. I hope that’s it and that there is a generation that has the patience to sit and watch stories that expand beyond five or ten minutes, and that this audience finds a satisfaction in delving into those stories.

How has your relationship with the industry and the specialized press been, especially with TTVNews ?

Specifically, TTVNews and the specialized press, in every sense, play, I think, the same role that we were talking about before about the content creators. We have the content creators and must create values; we are always pushing for higher quality, etc. I think the specialized press has the same role; it has a task, but in this case, not for such a wide audience but for a professional audience, which, at this moment, I think we have lost the north. The executives, producers, and distributors have been left without that next one.

I have always been interested in reading anecdotes in publications. Although there are not too many, generally, what we read is content with a sales objective for potential buyers. Other times, we talk about speculations about the market, what great or terrible times we are going through, and why we are going through these problems, and that tends to become repetitive.

But I have to say that TTVNews has always broken those molds, both in graphic design and in the questions asked when conducting this type of interview. It makes us think, and this helps us all move forward and create trends.

I believe that the last 20 years have been full of changes and well, I don’t think so, they have been full of changes and our business, and all the information published and organized by you, because somehow you purify it, organize it and place it in these publications, helps us to digest all these changes and these new trends and adapt to them, so I think you play an incredibly important role and as I said before, not only you have given us a lot of support as a company, All TV specifically, but you also help us to think and that is invaluable.

I feel like we need to lock ourselves in and do some research to forge a new future. What are we going to do going forward? This could all be very exciting and scary at the same time, but I think it’s a challenge that we’re going to get into together. It is very interesting to have them as partners, and congratulations on these last 20 years. I also have to thank them for the last 20 years that they have given us support as a company.