In the following interview with ttvnews, Jimmy Arteaga, President of Programming, Production, Promotion & Acquisitions at WAPA TV, shares what content they want to add to their catalog in the international market.

In an industry as evolving as the entertainment industry, it is imperative to stay one step ahead of the latest trends and know what the international market demands regarding content.

To this end, ttvnews presents the Buyers: What are buyers looking for? Initiative to learn first-hand about the programming needs of buyers around the world.

This time, we spoke to Jimmy Arteaga, President of Programming, Production, Promotion & Acquisitions at WAPA TV:

What kind of content, formats, or genres are industry events going for?

As a Group and as WAPA, we look for everything because WAPA TV has a variety of programming that we always have to cover. 

Thank God, we are lucky that virtually everything is working for us, and now we are oriented towards formats.It’s basically formats, telenovelas, movies, and series. We look at everything. 

While there is a team at Hemisphere, we also look at many things for the FAST, AVOD, and cable channels we have, like Cine Latino, Pasiones, and WAPA America. We will be looking for a vast breadth of elements. 

Where do you see the greatest growth potential for the company today, and how is this reflected in your programming strategy? 

I believe that there is a market phenomenon, which is inevitable, and that is the advance of technology, which has achieved not that people stop watching television, but instead that they change how they watch it. 

People still watch television, but what happens is that now they watch it on a tablet or their phone. There’s a significant advantage that free TV and open TV have, and it’s virtually impossible for a platform to make local newscasts from every country in the world. The reality of Uruguay is completely different from Puerto Rico, Peru, or Chile. 

So, what’s going on? Today, the platforms are showing products with commercials, so the fable that you don’t have commercial breaks is also happening. So I think that over the years, broadcast television has survived intelligently. 

It has several advantages. First, it directly interacts with the viewer and locality, and is the only real messenger through its local productions. 

Now, everybody wants to sell to broadcast television, which tells you this is a déjà vu, a circle.