ONE OF THE KEY DEMOGRAPHIC differences between the U.S. and Canada is the number of Hispanics here versus there.
Stateside, there’s an entire media sector dedicated to the Hispanic consumer, of which there are 40 million or so, including several cable channels such as Univision. In Canada, there are about one million Spanish-speaking Canadians and until recently, just one place to get some Spanish language programming: Telelatino.
Of late, however, other Spanish language channels have been added and in March, two Canadian channels were launched, one by the legacy brand owner in Canada, Telelatino.
In a recent chat with Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien, TLN president Aldo Di Felice (pictured below) outlines how his main channel has changed of late and why tln en espanol will be successful.
Greg O’Brien: Why is now a good time to launch tln en espanol?
Aldo Di Felice: We announced it a few months ago as you recall… the environment has been right over the last couple of years but we’ve been making sure that we come out right, with a channel that’s actually going to serve the audience.
There are few statistics in that press release that might give you a clear indication about how the Hispanic community, the Spanish-speaking part of Canada – or Canadians who speak Spanish, because it’s also the most studied non-official language in Canada – is growing. So, you take a look at that, you take a look at the immigration patterns… which is under the radar and it’s one of those surprising statistics. You look at the fact that… there were over 900,000 Spanish speakers in Canada, last year and that’s a growing number.
GOB: Are there other trends?
ADF: Our point is it’s a growing population we’ve been serving for 22 years. We’re the number one media in Spanish in Canada and we’re the number one media in Italian in Canada and that’s a testament to our longevity, our exclusivity and our efforts, so we want to build on that especially with an audience that is actually growing. We find we’re growing faster than ever (now). Then the other influence, of course, is the fact that there are 40 million Hispanics in the U.S.
GOB: How heavily influenced are we Canada over the growing Hispanic population in the States?
ADF: The actual proportions are night and day. In a lot of different sectors, a lot of different statistics, Canada is 10% of the U.S.: In population. But in the case of the Hispanic population in the U.S., 10% would mean four million here and we’re only at a quarter of that.
However, there’s been a cultural influence. Those 40 million Hispanics in the U.S. have had a huge cultural influence impact there on politics, on economics in music, culture, television, fashion. There’s a huge pop culture influence and that has come up into Canada because you’ll see an Hispanic character, whether it’s Eva Longoria on the Desperate Housewives or whoever else – in every major U.S. network show or cable show they’ll have an Hispanic character because they’re catering to the Spanish population… They’ve got huge influence there and it seems to be filtering slowly up to Canada.
And, to the extent that they’re closing the borders in the U.S. and we’re looking for more and more immigrants in Canada, I think immigration from South America, especially with their economic problems, will tend to be more, will tend to be stronger as it has been over the last few years.
GOB: Is it a tough sell to the distributors in Canada? Because when you think of third-language channels, Rogers and Bell often talk about the Chinese community and the South Asian communities. Do you have to remind them that the Spanish community is a huge influence here in Canada as well?
ADF: …(T)here are about two dozen source countries, or Spanish-speaking countries in the world. Countries that have primarily Spanish-speaking populations, so it’s a very culturally diverse, very ethnically diverse audience in and of itself, but there’s a shared language called Spanish. (As TLN), we’ve always been a channel that kind of picks the shared parts of those cultures and delivers them in Spanish and now there are a certain number of foreign services that have been approved for Canada and those tend to be regional, like the national service of Mexico, for example.
GOB: Yeah, there’s TV Azteca, TV Chile, and Canal des Estreilles and some others. So is there room enough for you?
ADF: The landscape for ethnic television in Canada, ethnic specialty television has certainly changed ever since the CRTC kind of turned all the rules upside down a couple of years ago thanks to some kind of high profile political and regulatory lobbying right? Turning those rules upside down really changed the world for Canada’s ethnic broadcasters, both the ones who have been around for years and for decades and the ones that potentially could be born in the future.
GOB: How have they changed life for you?
ADF: In the case of Telelatino, we’re in a unique position because we’ve been around for two decades; we had a pre-eminent position in both Spanish and Italian and I think we have a special knowledge of each of those communities and the kind of intimate knowledge of those communities that we have is something that is very proprietary and it’s very valuable and we come to appreciate more and more because a lot of people don’t know the nuances of how to influence these communities, how to serve these communities and how to engage with them. And we do… we’re working from a position of strength.
The foreign services on the Spanish side tend to have a certain number of advantages because they make absolutely no commitment to the Canadian system under these new rules that were put in place. This new landscape involves foreign players being able to compete under more favorable terms than domestic players, which is sort of a unique concept I think in the world, while domestic players continue to have all of the obligations that they’ve always had.
That is always a little bit challenging in a way irritating because there seems to be a lack of appreciation for the fact that domestic broadcasters already have operated under a set of rules that were limiting in the sense that for example, all of the traditional Canadian production funds are not available to third-language production.
There are certain things like that; there was never really a great appreciation for in Canada. So, the fact that ethnic broadcasters are going to be even more challenged, I think is a bit off-putting, but on the other hand, Telelatino is coming from a position of strength, so when we’re competing against regionalized channels that are the Mexico Channel, the Chile Channel, the Argentina Channel, those channels have limited appeal in Canada for a number of reasons.
Number one: the other two dozen source countries – people coming from Peru feel that a Mexican channel is too Mexican and coming from Argentina feel that the Chilean channel is too Chilean. We have always delivered programming that is common to everybody. So, that’s what we’ve done with the new channel, tln en espanol, which is a pan-American service that deals with issues that are important to everybody.
GOB: Can you expand on more of the programming you’ll be carrying on tln en espanol?
ADF: We are an everything for everybody kind of service. We deal with the commonality of Spanish speaking Canadians. Number one, we have a huge amount of programming from CNN Espanol and they deal with reports on the ground in every country… so it’s information that’s important to everybody.
The second part… is we have the number one sport in the Hispanic world, exclusively. We have the next 32 World Cup Tournaments between 2007 and 2014, exclusively in Canada in Spanish as part of our deal with CBC, starting with the under 20s this June.
These are World Cup Tournaments so there are nation versus nation, Hispanic nation versus European nation, Hispanic nation versus African nation, the point is we’re going to have all the Hispanic nations who qualify for these tournaments involved, not just the Mexican team, not just the Brazilian team, not just the Argentinean team.
Thirdly, we have an intense interest and an intense knowledge and appreciation for what Hispanic Canadians have lived day-to-day in Canada. We’re going to have a huge component of local Canadian knowledge, expertise, information, entertainment, artists, businesspeople, etc. And none of the foreign channels have any Canadanized content. They don’t even have Canadianized context because they are feeding the service, sometimes on a time-deferred basis, that’s not in-line with viewing patterns in Canada because they’re sending the signal across multiple time zones.
And it’s certainly not contextualized for Canadians in any form of content. Sometimes, no weather reports from Canada, no news reports from Canada, no information regarding Canadian norms, no information for any Canadian events. Nothing about Canada, nothing about the actual population that speaks Spanish in Canada and we will have all of that.
Through our research we know that CNN Espanol is a perfect product, a perfect service for Canadian Hispanics. We know that soccer is the perfect driver sport. And then we know that the tele-novellas that we pick for this service are going to be tele-novellas that are going to be of wide appeal.
GOB: Do you have any distribution deals that you can announce?
ADF: Well, we’ve just made the signal operational, so we’re just in the midst right now of making the signal available to the distributors. I think that we will have one within a very short period.
GOB: Are you going to be on any other platforms like mobile or broadband or anything like that?
ADF: I think the first step is to get the linear channel off the ground, but we do have an actual catalog, which is very deep, of Italian, Spanish, and English content that’s available for VOD.
In the case of all the soccer, we do actually multi-platform rights in the all the soccer that I just talked about, so that programming will appear on other platforms. The first step in exploiting some multi-platform rights is to actually secure them. So we’ve done that, for different products, for soccer in particular with VOD, mobile, radio and broadband.
GOB: Will the soccer be shown in HD?
ADF: Right now, there are no plans to show it in HD. We don’t have a HD service yet in TLN. But to the extent of HD transmission becomes available, and then we’re going to take a look at being able to deliver these in HD. It’s interesting to note is that Univision, which is the premier Hispanic-American network, still does not have an HD service in the U.S.
GOB: Okay. How’s the flagship TLN performing right now? Over the past couple of years, you’ve gone through some changes and added some different programming like The Sopranos and Everybody Loves Raymond. How’s it’s doing now that you’ve seen through those and that the former RAI programming is no longer there.
ADF: Those are two different questions. We can talk about the RAI programming and what happened with that or we can talk about the inclinations that we’re leaning towards because we’re following our demographic and following our audience, which is an assimilated audience that appreciates bi-lingual "in-culture" programming.
So, Sopranos and Raymond were those kinds of programs and they’re premier programs too. What was really fascinating and what we’re excited about is they performed well for – our advertisers love them, our viewers love them – but they have not alienated any of our core viewers. They’ve been incremental and we haven’t substituted viewers, we’ve actually increased our viewership by adding to our traditional viewers. Our traditional viewers sometimes discovered Raymond on Telelatino. They have never previously seen it on CBS or anywhere else. It was an interesting phenomenon.
Sopranos, the same thing. It’s because we emphasize the ethnic aspects of these characters and these shows, but also we run them in multiple languages. So, for example, Sopranos runs in Italian weekly as well on Sunday nights… in addition to English, Monday through Friday, late night. So, I think the way we package it, the way we deliver in multiple languages, that’s unique. That’s not done in Canada by anybody else. It’s not done in the U.S. by anybody else. We’re very unique that way.
It’s an assimilation facto, a comfort factor where people feel at home with our channel if they’re Spanish- or Italian-speaking. At the same time though, there are kids who have grown up in English, French, or Canada and they’re speaking the official languages. There’s no reason that the network should alienate them. And then at the same time, there are a number of Anglophones and Francophones who have a special kind of affinity for Italian travel, cooking and fashion or Hispanic music.
International soccer fans, even though it’s Italy and the on-field commentary might be in Italian and you hear the players and the coach yelling in Italian, they want to watch that, and we give that to them in English sometimes or give them in multiple languages, so, it’s a balancing act.
GOB: What about the RAI programming and what happened there.
ADF: We built a big market for a number of the premiere shows on RAI. A lot of people have realized that… and we get comments all the time that they’ve realized we’ve always told them the truth – in terms of the fact that there was very little on RAI of value that they weren’t seeing. They were seeing the crème of RAI International, which more or less has about three or four hours a day, at the very most, of top-notch programming.
The rest consists of repeats and filler programming from various RAI channels or acquisitions and things like that. They were seeing that on Telelatino. They were getting eight or ten hours a day of RAI International programming and they realized now that, in fact, other than that core programming from RAI, there’s not very much else.
Having said that, those programs are much less readily available than they used to be. Rather than they being available in three-and-a-half to four million homes in prime time, they are now available at seven in the morning or in the afternoon, because maybe they are aired live and people are not at home to see them. And they’re only available in say, tens of thousands of homes. So, for RAI it’s probably not been a great experience. They operate independently now, but in fact, they’ve probably done a disservice to the Italian-Canadian community in the sense they’ve deprived the vast majority of people from programs that they had been habituated to over two decades by Telelatino.
Have we been able to substitute that programming for that audience? Yes. Italy has, over the last decade, had a real expansion in its television programming environment because it was monopolized for a long time and we’ve introduced for example, Sky News from Sky Italia.
GOB: So, it doesn’t all come from (former Prime Minister Sylvio) Berlusconi anymore?
ADF: No. I mean it used to be Berlusconi and the government but now there’s a little bit more diversity in the system with independent operators and then in terms of Sky Italia coming out and doing proprietary channels and one of them is its flagship news and information channel, a-la CNN, that they have called Sky-TG24, their news 24 hours. We deliver that both of the complete channels in Canada, we also deliver segments of it on Telelatino, and of course, that’s replaced completely the RAI news. In fact, in Italy there are reports that SKY-TG24 is much more respected and valued… as a more independent and more reliable news and information than either of the other news services that are available, including RAI’s own national state news.
GOB: Do you plan on launching any other channels in Canada – either acting as an agent for foreign channels or doing something on your own?
ADF: …I think we’re always talking to everybody because we source our programming. The programming that we don’t source in Canada or that we don’t produce in Canada, we source internationally. So, we’re always talking to the international services about potential. But I think our focus now a lot on exploiting our multi-platform rights and also exploiting our special connections to our audience because as everybody goes toward new media, we’re also looking at old media. For example, we’ve done very well in doing street festivals… We do concerts and street festivals on an annual basis and are looking to do more of that because eventually people do actually congregate face-to-face, as much as they are online or on mobile phones, or wherever else, they do actually want to come face-to-face.
