Ahead of Mipcom 2021, Jorge Balleste, VP of Content Partnerships and Acquisitions at Univision, 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 Jorge Balleste, VP of Content Partnerships and Acquisitions at Univision.
What type of content are you looking for?
We are looking across many categories. Our offer is wide and it starts with fiction, telenovelas and movies, but also documentaries, kids’ content and lifestyle. There’s many categories that we’re filling with content.
Which distributors do you normally work with?
That’s also a wide array. We work with Hollywood studios, Disney, MGM, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures. And in terms of content in LatAm we work with Caracol, RCTV, Globo, several bigger and smaller ones in the market, looking for all types of content.
How has the pandemic influenced the acquisition of content?
I think it has become a bit more competitive. The pandemic has raised the amount of content being watched and that has led to the type of content available in the market being more competitive. There are also more platforms that are launching, having more visibility. And that has created more competition than in years past. Likewise, we have been able to acquire certain franchises and important content for our platform and we are satisfied with what we have been able to achieve.
What’s Prende TV’s target audience?
Prende TV is in the US Hispanic market, including Puerto Rico. The target is much broader than traditional linear networks are and this gives us much more flexibility when acquiring content.
Not only are we looking for content that is aligned with the audience and what they traditionally look for in linear channels, but it is also much broader in the sense that it is younger content, for a much younger target. And we also have a broader offer of kids’ content, animation, preschool, and so on through to family content.
What’s in store for the company in the near future?
Prende TV is a unique offer. We saw an open opportunity in the market where we realized that the Spanish-speaking segment was not being attacked in this area of streaming as it should be and we decided to make this launch, but it is only the beginning of everything that Univision and Televisa are bringing in the future. We recently announced that we are going to launch an SVOD platform in 2022 and this continues, it is just the beginning of everything we are planning in the near future.
I think this has a lot to do with the company’s strategy and the new leaders that have now arrived with the transformation of Univision. Everything they have said from the beginning has been done and more, but it is only the beginning. We cannot let a situation like the pandemic stop us from doing our job that we are all passionate about, because great things can be done despite what we cannot control. We know that we are on the right track.
