Children and teenage telenovelas

Televisa Niños in Mexico, Globo in Brazil and Cris Morena Productions in Argentina are points of reference for children’s and youth telenovelas and series. Producing and doing business for the little ones is for big and risky enterprises. But for these companies it is the goose that lays the golden eggs. They are offering interactive telenovelas in which the audiences make decisions on the product, and they are doing great in the profitable business of product placement and merchandising.

Children’s products
A great business

ollowing the worldwide trend of markets segmentation, Televisa bets hard on its children’s section. It has an infrastructure of assessors, psychologists and pedagogues that know children’s taste to perfection. Besides, they lean on the consultant’s department of the Instituto de Investigaciones sociales (Social Research Institute), a Televisa’s section working on quantitative and qualitative research. They also have what they call Children’s Assessors, who are a group of viewers from all ages taking turns and working on the creation of these programs together with the producers, contributing with ideas.

	Rosy Ocampo

According to its director, Rosy Ocampo, there is a basic factor when it comes to creating: the content must be suitable for children getting an education.
“Televisa is the only one that is constantly producing children’s telenovelas,” says Ocampo, and at the same time she tells us that they arrange their programming mainly by producing children’s telenovelas such as Misión S.O.S, of which they make 2 or 3 a year and are programmed in the 4 to 5 pm slot. But they also co-produce with Sesame Workshow, the same ones that produced Plaza Sésamo.

 Shows, toys and product placement
 “We have witnessed the increase of the audiences eager for these contents that come along with products. Once we started producing them and programming them regularly, ratings reached peaks of 39 points,” assures the producer. “Nowadays, the more stable slots are the telenovelas ones, with which we have a double function: bearing responsibility for the contents and generating incomes. Not only from selling the programs abroad but also from selling alternative products such as compact discs, concerts and toys.”
The Licenses Department deals with merchandising, and music companies –which are chosen through tendering, such as Warner, BMG and Universal– have their own strategy and marketing plans regarding music. On the other hand, Televisa Estudios –the International Sales division– is in charge of sales, having a great success.
 How do you deal with the product placement or advertisement within the telenovelas?
 We work together with the Sales Department and the client on deciding which products may enter and which may not. We shoot special scenes where we place the product if it is for the local market. The idea is not to have any problem and that we can export the product to places where they don’t have this kind of business contracts. But, basically, we try to carry out with the product placement behind the curtains, so that when it comes the moment of exporting you just take them out and the product is clean.
 
New audiences and interactivity
Television channels try to get feedback from the audience every day, it is a way to attract new audiences and also check that the product is doing well. “We’re getting closer and closer to an interactive television each day. For instance, the telenovela Misión S.O.S is a pioneer in this interaction activity that allows the audience to have the possibility of making decisions on the product. There’s also Código fama, which is based on telephone calls from the audience so that it is the viewers who decide who will be the winner that will take part of a telenovela as the protagonist,” she states.
The next immediate goal is the complete internationalization of these products. “Our telenovelas reach a special position in the international markets, however, their potential is even bigger. We want that the big networks have special slots for our children’s productions.”
Finally, the director of Televisa Niños says that in the children’s market they need more and more specialists, producers and researchers that focus 100 % on children, and she assures that it is a market that is growing by leaps and bounds. Her great challenge: being able to get to an end with such a small number of slots for children’s programs in the Latin American television.

Erika Loaiza, Natasha, Oscar Alberto Ferreira and willmar Peña, from Código Fama.

---

What do teenagers watch?

Telenovelas, series, comedies with local customs topics and many teen characters, serials, thriller and horror miniseries and half hour programs are the main products offered by the most important channels of the Latin American television for the youth generation.

	Frecuencia 04

Although in open TV, and mainly in the prime time, it is almost impossible to design programs directly targeted on the youth, this year the most important directors in the Latin television business decided to broadcast programs with several added features to attract the youth. Bernarda Llorente, Programming and Contents assistant director at Telefe, in Argentina, tells us: “Youth products, such as Frecuencia 04, are programs made for multiplatform, it means that we believe they can have other kinds of marketing such as in the theatre and music business. It’s a format that can work very well abroad because nowadays it’s a boom in all the Latin American television channels, which are seeking teenagers’ products.” Frecuencia 04’s format is very similar to the story of Fame, that is, an art school where besides developing different artistic disciples, many different human stories are going on.
Fiction and entertainment projects are getting highly popular in the whole region. In Colombia, the afternoon children’s and youth slots start with family telenovelas. Un angel llamado azul and El vuelo del cometa hit the target, and Pandillas de guerra y paz, produced by Telecolombia for RCN, is a complete success.
During holiday season, all the Latin American channels broadcast anything to trap the youth audience. They bet on local productions with a great number of young characters that have conflicts and love stories, which usually appeal to the teenagers. Entertainment productions are formats that have worked in almost the whole world. That is the case of Cien mexicanos dicen, which in the United States was called Family Feud and in Mexico it trapped the audience. But on the other hand, the hidden cameras and humor programs where they criticize and laugh at the mistakes and bloopers of others are not working. Thirteen-episode programs, serials and series delight the youth audiences, but usually with a common factor: fiction.
In Argentina, for instance, the producing company Pol-ka made Epifatios for HBO network. It is a thriller series that was made to order, but it is based on Pol-Ka’s original story and idea. As a complement, magazine programs about pop music, rock and salsa are another winner product, specially on paid TV.

Business are business
Alternative business coming from the television programs with this target are very attractive, and even though everybody we interviewed agreed that the Argentinean crisis had a negative effect on concerts, magazines and merchandising, they also have great prospects and projects in these markets.

Argentinean youth profile
When it comes to make a profile of youth audiences, we know that they were born with open and cable television and many of them were born with PCs as well. They are very informed and selective audiences that know how to look for the products they want according to their interests. Besides, teenagers are not patient people, when they are watching something they do not like, they change channels.
“Young people look for very specific things and sometimes we underestimate them. Many executives aiming at this target think it’s easy, but it’s really complicated. This audience is very demanding. Some executives believe that teenagers want to laugh at the others. That trend –which was in fashion for a long time and it was clearly seen, for instance, in the success of the hidden cameras– is something that nowadays youth doesn’t like. Nowadays teenagers value very much that they are given a space to express themselves, and they also respect the other people. Another trend I notice is that, just like it happens with the media, young people are more and more fragmentized. Audiences are starting to divide, so it’s very difficult to please everybody, but what we can do instead is look for suitable products for each audience segment,” says Llorente.
As a conclusion, the so longed digitalization will open the door to a boom of contents that have already been tested. And all of them will have a secure audience. After some time there will be more and more segments and opportunities, and new independent offers will emerge.