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 Entertainment | April 2008 
Televisa Signs French Deal
 John Hopewell - Variety
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| | More telenovela adaptations planned | | |
Cannes — Showing the same kind of appetite for international business as the U.S. studios, Mexican TV colossus Televisa is disembarking full-throttle in France.
The most immediate step, announced Tuesday afternoon at Mip TV, is a co-production agreement with Jean-Luc Azoulay’s well-placed Gallic production house JLA on 100 more hours of French Caribbean soap “La baie des flamboyants,” a redo of Televisa’s telenovela “Codigo postal,” aired on France’s overseas channel RFO.
The plan is for the new season to air on France’s biggest pubcaster channel, France, Jose Baston, VP of Televisa’s television division said at Mip.
For Televisa, that deal is just the tip of the iceberg.
One of Latin America’s TV giants, Televisa is already planning further soaps with JLA in a fully fledged co-production alliance.
First up, said Baston, is an adaptation of either “Dumb Girls Don’t Go to Heaven,” Televisa’s major new telenovela at Mip, or a redo of youth-skewed “Alcanzar una estrella.”
But the scale of Televisa’s ambitions are much larger.
It is targeting five key markets for strategic partnerships, said Baston: China, France, Indonesia, Russia and India.
Already, Televisa has supplied its own version of “Ugly Betty” for an adaptation by satcaster Hunan TV.
Once a pure-play distributor of its own voluminous content outside Mexico, Televisa international expansion doesn’t just turn on distribution.
“Our main business by far is Mexico. We are a content producer and distributor,” said Baston. “But we want to become a bigger international player, not just selling our content but becoming part of the production and ancillary business, and playing a large part in advertising buys in local territories,” Baston said.
That has already become a reality in China, where the Hunan TV “Ugly Betty” accord included an ad agency financing deal with Unilever.
An Indonesian pact is also in the cards.
“We’re in the process of signing a letter of intent to be able to start negotiations (with a local company),” Baston said.
Televisa can bring valuable assets to the table. The Mexican behemoth boasts a huge library.
“Televisa can bring products of consistent quality with long-term potential, not just a couple of projects,” Baston said.
It has a decades-long expertise in audience-driven longform formats. That know-how is now prized by Gallic broadcasters and producers.
For Bertrand Villegas, at WIT, the Paris-based audience research company, there’s “escalating competition in France’s traditionally comfy TV market. Soaps are a burgeoning market. But there’s very little tradition or know-how,” beyond the likes of Marathon, whose new soap, “Sisterhood” is airing on France 2.
Azoulay is also well connected in France.
“The know-who is sometimes as important as the know-how,” Baston half joked. |
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