Actor Anna Silvetti never thought she would be a yoga instructor on Spanish-language television. After performing in 31 telenovelas that spanned almost all the Spanish-language networks, including El Cuerpo del Deseo on Telemundo and Amor Comprado on Univision, the Spanish actor and Miami resident can be seen demonstrating downward-facing dog and other yoga poses on V-me, a new network that aims to revolutionize Spanish-language television.
"I'd like to send another message besides playing mean, bitchy women," said Silvetti, who continues to work as an actor. "Television is a great vehicle to do that."
Along with health and lifestyle programs, V-me, a new nationwide satellite and digital network based in Manhattan, plans to air self-produced Spanish-language dramas as well as children's and educational programs, a move that could redefine a sector of television currently dominated by news and telenovelas, the Spanish-language soap operas primarily produced in Mexico and South America.
V-me — which comes from the Spanish word veme or "see me" — was founded in March 2007 and currently reaches 50 percent of the Spanish-speaking households in the United States, according to Nielsen Media Research. The same study projects that in 2009, V-me will reach 80 percent of those households. The station has no plans to produce telenovelas.
In an Oct. 15 conference in Manhattan called The Future of Hispanic-Latin Entertainment, Media and Technology Markets, V-me founder and executive chairman Mario Baeza said he developed the station after he conducted viewer research that found a demand for diverse programming in Hispanic television.
"I remember I was sitting in the board meeting [to develop V-me] and [investors] would say, 'But Hispanics only watch telenovelas,' " Baeza said in a panel discussion that included executives from top competitors Univision, Telemundo, and TV Azteca. "I had to go through a whole process to show them that there is room and demand for different programming. I said, 'Here are studies; here are surveys.'"
In Demand, Tough to Find
According to Carmen DiRienzo, president and chief executive officer at V-me, the network held focus groups prior to its formation that took a broad Hispanic sample and found a high demand for children's, lifestyle, and music programming, plus Spanish-language film as opposed to dubbed film.
"There was an amazing amount of agreement that programming of the type that we offer was in demand and tough to find in Spanish in the U.S.," she said. "That was the beginning of V-me."
V-me's first in-house scripted program, a preschool show called The Fairies, will be produced in the United States next year and utilize Hispanic talent from North America (exact location to be decided). Currently, the station imports its scripted programming from countries such as Iceland and Australia, but according to Guillermo Sierra, V-me senior vice president and chief content officer, The Fairies will be the first of many self-produced scripted shows that will include, along with children's programs, original dramas and miniseries.
"Right now we are borrowing miniseries and film, but we see the opportunity in drama," he said. "We have a plan to start ramping up production in upcoming years, and the deal is, in the future, that most of it will be originally produced in the United States. Obviously it's a process."
Further, Sierra said V-me's content could be exported to untapped markets in North America and abroad. "We see a tremendous opportunity here because there's a lot of Spanish-language import coming from Latin America to the U.S. but not the other way around," he said. "But American productions are huge in Latin America. Just look at CSI."
A Hot Market
The potential growth for Spanish-language networks in the United States is substantial. According to Nielsen, the networks benefit from consistent population increases; the number of Spanish-speaking citizens in the States rose from 22.2 million in 1992-93 to 38.9 million in 2005-06, or about 14 percent of the U.S. population.
Ad spending in Spanish-language network and cable television also grew from $1.8 billion in 2001 to more than $3 billion in 2006, according to Nielsen. KMEX, a Spanish-language Univision network based in Los Angeles, is the most watched local station in the country. Sierra said V-me and other large networks with Spanish-language content enjoy high ratings because of hefty demand and few options on traditional U.S. networks.
"There are a thousand options in English, but we are the only option for those who want to dedicate a portion of their viewing to this kind of programming in the Spanish language," he said.
Ray Rodriguez, president and chief operating officer of Univision, the leading Spanish-language network in the U.S., said at the conference that his company has a built-in edge over the competition. "There's tremendous opportunity for a company that advertises in Spanish to grow new consumers," he said. "That's something that we have that the English media does not have.... I'd rather be on this side than in traditional media in the world today."
Bread and Butter
Although the major Spanish-language channels have launched technological initiatives such as mobile transmissions and user-generated content on their websites to keep up with the digital age, they still depend on telenovelas for ratings. "The novela is something that's not going away," Adrian Steckel, president and CEO of Azteca America, said at the conference. "Hispanic viewers don't like watching a different show every day. They want to follow strips.... They want to know who killed who, who betrayed who."
According to Alfredo Richard, senior vice president of communications and talent development at Telemundo, the network's novelas run during prime-time hours and reach more than 1 million U.S. viewers. "The telenovela is our bread and butter," he said.
Richard said that although novelas are age-old devices, the product is constantly evolving to accommodate younger American-born viewers, particularly for broadcast on Telemundo's new youth-oriented cable network, Mundos, also known as Mun2. The novela El Rostro de AnalÃa, for instance, which is self-produced by Telemundo in Miami, takes place in Los Angeles — as opposed to a Latin American country — and according to Richard has more edge than older telenovelas: "It's not breaking away from the novela completely, but it's breaking away from the Cinderella story" that telenovelas are known for.
Richard said the Telemundo novelas feature a blend of North, South, and Central American actors and are always in search of "fresh Hispanic faces." Richard will seek novela talent Nov. 15 at Back Stage's Actorfest in Manhattan.
Silvetti, however, said her experience with telenovela casting is typically slanted toward actors from outside the States. Of the telenovelas produced in the States, most are made in Miami, but the city has yet to build star power equal to that of Mexico and South America.
"Since Miami doesn't have the tradition of doing novelas, there are no stars here," said Silvetti, who built her name in Mexico prior to moving to Miami. "Even though there are amazing actors here, producers usually bring people from South America to be the leading roles."
Though she will continue to perform in telenovelas — albeit "not as much" — she looks forward to a new image of Latinos on V-me. "I think that the mission statement of V-me is to be a little more open about what Latinos are," said Silvetti. "We're not all drug addicts and whores; we're also architects and doctors and so on."
Write to the author at halley.bondy@backstage.com.