Amanda Ospina, Executive Director during her visit to the Eastern Europe countries.

Globalization is being redefined as the driving force of central peripheral relations, because it consists in transformations from and within the national aspect –that is, locally. Each country’s economy and culture globalizes, therefore, countries will need to consolidate their culture and develop their own economies, but at the same time they will have to accept other cultures and widen their participation in international territories.
What does this mean for the telenovela industry? There are many answers to this, but the great challenge is something that goes beyond a larger spreading : it consists in trying to rearticulate the relations among countries by carrying out a decentralization that leads to the improvement of quality products –more economic power– and stopping locally-targeted productions in order to facilitate distribution and exchange –and to even reach the integration of cultures, which is produced as a direct consequence of the globalization of information.
We have to bear in mind that the television entertainment business has become extremely powerful worldwide. Since the new millennium, the boom of thematic channels has been highly significant, as well as other distribution platforms like the Internet, cell phones and the increasing demand on DVDs. All these business products are highly potential to the telenovela and drama genres, showing feasibility to apply a process of reengineering within the industry that makes it easier for it to join this constant development.
Another important fact to take into account in this industry today is the way telenovelas participate in the channels’ business plans –that is, the advertising business in day time and prime time slots: how and which will be the spirit of the business system facing a commitment towards not only viewers but also the advertisers that expect an audience for their brands? And in the face of these challenges, the telenovela genre is and will be successful, because it is a product with characteristics of its own that for many decades has proved capable of winning a large audience share –achieving 75% of the audience in many countries, which before only football could do.
The social phenomenon caused by telenovelas has captivated audiences up to 5 hours running watching one telenovela after the other. On prime time, they have reached extraordinary rating peaks, like no other products, and great capacity to compete with the products of the majors (Hollywood Studios). This has been sufficiently proved in the United States, specially in relation to Univision, which has become a powerful multimedia network with Televisa’s telenovelas, showing that it has more audience on prime time than American channels. All these reasons confirm the huge potential of telenovelas to be explored and exploited, since it is a privileged genre in the current times of globalization and convergence.
This genre is the perfect spell to captivate audiences, but the challenge for Latin American industries is to redesign the business to compete in important and needed markets. Here emerges a question for future analysis: are formats the great opportunity in times of globalization? The truth is there have never been so many opportunities, such varies options and diversity of prospects for this business as found today.