Ahead of Mipcom 2021, Héctor Arosemena, Content Director at TVN, spoke to TTV+ about the content he’s looking for in the international market.

TTVMedia, through its TTV+ platform and backed by Eccho Rights, presents its Buyers: What Are They Looking For? initiative to find out more about international buyers’ programming needs.

The interviews were conducted through the base of over 5,000 buyers registered on TTV+, a 24/7 online marketplace where buyers can look through catalogs from thousands of companies, and in which distributors can contact them to close businesses.

This time, we present Héctor Arosemena, Content Director at TVN.

What kind of content are you looking for?

We have two screens. The TVN screen, which is the main one, the general one. And we have TVMax, which is our B channel, but the main sports channel, for a more male target, looking for alternative content.

For the main screen, where the focus is almost 100% associated with telenovelas, we are riding the wave of Turkish dramas, which have a spectacular performance here in Panama. And the idea is to keep looking for what that next big hit is going to be.

And to be able to maintain the results that we are having with products like Mother, which has already been airing throughout Latin America. And now we will have it airing in prime time. And the surprise of the year, Forbidden Fruit by Calinos. We are one of the only two channels that have it in Latin America. It was a bet for prime time and it was great for us.

We also want to step away from the most classic Turkish content, which shows stories of challenges and pain, and how that turns into a happy ending. We try to always look for the ones that have a happy ending for our audience. But now we are moving a bit towards more edgy products, with more Latin plots, more of young, modern characters. And that has worked out quite well for us.

We also continue with allies like Caracol, bringing fresh and innovative products that they have to the screen. We do very well with their musical products. Now we are about to release Amar y Vivir de Caracol and eager for La Reina del Flow 2 to arrive on our screen.

And in terms of formats?

In terms of formats, since last year with the pandemic we have changed the way we produce TV. It also forced us to stop making giant formats like Your Face Sounds Familiar or Dancing With the Stars, and now go to smaller formats. We have developed the strip of prime shows, which are smaller in cost, structure and magnitude, but with a high commercial and audience impact, because they are shorter.

For that we have focused on Game Shows such as Keshet’s Contacts or Touch, which we premiered on TVN. They are formats that we are positioning in Panama as the kings of interaction. People play from home. We put a QR code and people can compete from their cell phone. We are bringing the audience to participate with us because we do not have the giant live shows and we are innovating with products like these that we have brought from distributors like Keshet.

The idea is to keep looking for other innovative things on the market that have a lot of interaction, second screen, and these smaller, low-cost formats have worked very well for us.

I do not rule out returning to large formats, but the truth is that it will not be the same as before. We will take them to the size that the industry deserves due to the situation of the advertisers. But trying to find the highest impact that allows us to be the number one option for Panamanians. The pandemic accelerated digital content and makes us have to follow that path and bring people formats in which they can interact. We are taking the interaction system to the entire grid.

What kind of content are you looking for to feed your streaming platform?

In October of last year, we launched a streaming platform called TVN Pass, which has our live channels (TVN, TVNMax and Radio) with very high consumption of content such as news, telenovelas and sports. But we have created a catalog of VOD content, with our own content that we ourselves make for our local audience that is looking for content from here in Panama.

But we are also looking for valuable content for streaming platforms. We have done well with Caracol products such as La nena, which is a short web series that we have on TVN Pass, with good success. And we continue looking for products of this kind. This is also something we are actively looking for.