José Antonio Salso, Head of Acquisitions & International Sales at Atresmedia, spoke to TTV+ about the content he’s looking for in the international market.

TTVMedia, through its TTV+ platform and backed by Eccho Rights, launched the initiative Buyers: What Are They Looking For? during Miptv, 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 José Antonio Salso, Head of Acquisitions & International Sales at Atresmedia.

Could you introduce yourself and your company?

My name is José Antonio Salso and I’m Head of Acquisitions & International Sales at Atresmedia.

The Atresmedia group is the leader in content production in Spanish in Spain. We’re participating at LA Screenings to search for content to feed our family of linear networks, and more recently our ATRESPlayer Premium platform, which we launched a year ago with great success, because it’s growing significantly.

What type of content are you looking for?

The type of content we’re looking for to feed our channels in the international market is mainly strong dramas that have universal stories which can captivate our audience.

Mainly Antena 3 with Turkish content, but also our niche channels focused on female audiences with Latin telenovelas, which we also air.

But also other types of channels, procedural series with episodes that can air in a daytime slot, standalone episodes, that have a quality and a story comparable to traditional US productions, which used to have an important presence on our channels, but that we’ve systematically replaced with other types of European, French or English productions, with characters that are probably not as glamorous as those in US TV, but that are closer to our audience and that viewers can relate to more easily.

Any type of story in particular you might be looking for to feed your screen?

It’s very hard to narrow it down to one idea. We are increasingly finding products that deal with different aspects. Not just more traditional investigation series.

Aside from the series’ idea or concept, what matters is that it’s made for a broad audience and can captivate our viewers with notable production quality. Atresmedia has always been known for having high production quality, and a varied and high-quality offer, aimed at all genres, from events to news or fiction.

Within that product or those categories, any drama that’s packaged that way will be welcome to air on our networks. And we’re present in every market actively looking for that type of productions.

Any title that has caught your attention over the last 12 months?

Over the last 12 months, we went through an unprecedented situation, with increased TV consumption due to the pandemic. We are inching closer to moments of record TV consumption. And the audience is hungry for content at a time when production is not that easy due to the pandemic.

However, our networks have never let their guard down. We’ve bet on maintaining original productions with the Atresmedia quality stamp. And in between, we’ve also done some experiments or tests on our screen, such as the premiere of Woman in June of 2020 in the middle of a pandemic.

Any title that has worked particularly well for you?

Aside from Turkish content, we have room in our family of networks for all types of products. From classic procedural series, to Latin or Turkish telenovelas, or exploring other types of female content.

We also have our network Mega, which is based on factual entertainment for a male audience, with character-driven series, searching for unique characters and very much based on entertainment.

Neox is our youth network. We’re airing Love Island, the internationally successful format which we’re also replicating on social media. We continue to offer comedies aimed at a younger audience and movies.

We have our family of networks focused on products and targets that are so specific, that at the end of the day we attend markets in search for all types of content to feed our networks. And now also ATRESPlayer Premium, although the offer in that regard has more to do with original series production for the platform, such as Veneno or #Luimelia, Ana Milán or the debut of Física o Química, which was a great success for the platform and led to an avalanche of fans of the original series, as well as opened new targets and audiences who hadn’t watched the original series at the time. We are very happy in that regard.