BBC Aligns with Televisa for Channel Expansion

LONDON/MEXICO CITY, July
14: In an exclusive interview with World Screen Newsflash, Darren
Childs, the managing director of BBC Worldwide Channels, and Bruce Boren,
the CEO of Televisa Networks, reveal details of the landmark alliance between
the two companies that will see BBC Entertainment and CBeebies rolling out
across Latin America.

The two networks from BBC
Worldwide’s suite of global networks are set to launch in Mexico later this
year, before expanding to other Spanish-speaking markets in the region. This is
the first time that BBC’s wholly-owned global channels will be available in
Latin America, following rollouts in Poland, Singapore, Hong Kong, India and
South Korea.

“We’ve had an incredibly
exciting year around the world, in terms of announcing a lot of growth,” Childs
tells World Screen Newsflash.
“We just recently announced a big Australian deal and we’ve been expanding
around the world. This is just one market where we only had the news channel;
it felt like we should also have our entertainment and preschool kids
channels.”

Childs notes that aligning
with Televisa Networks, which distributes a portfolio of its own channels
across Latin America, was a logical choice for the BBC. “From our perspective,
we’re just ecstatic that we’ve been able to get together with a company like
Televisa to help us fulfill our ambitions in Latin America. I couldn’t wish for
any better partner. It’s been something that Bruce and I have been working on
for quite some time. Putting two big corporations together like this is
complicated. But I think we’re both over the moon that we’ve been able to
structure this.”

For Televisa Networks, the
deal with the BBC sees it entering an entirely new arena—third-party
channel representation. “It has everything to do with the quality of the BBC’s
content,” Boren explains. “We now have a preschool channel, which we haven’t
done in the past and don’t have any content internally to do, and also a
channel with all the great general-entertainment programming that the BBC
already produces. If we went out into the marketplace and tried to acquire all
this content and launch the channel ourselves, it would be really prohibitive.”

Boren continues: “There
have been off-the-record discussions with a lot of operators in Latin America
and they’re excited about the two channels and we’re obviously very excited to
be able to offer them, because they don’t compete with anything we
have—they’re complementary to our lineups.”

To ensure that the
services appeal to audiences in the region, Childs explains that local teams
will be assembled to handle the programming and on-air creative. “We go in on a
market-by-market, country-by-country basis to ensure that our channels are
completely focused on delivering large audiences in each market in which they
operate.”

CBeebies will be dubbed
into Spanish, with an option for viewers on digital platforms to choose the
original English-language audio. BBC Entertainment, meanwhile, will be
subtitled.

Boren and Childs both
stress that the deal for BBC Entertainment and CBeebies is just the beginning
of what is expected to be a much bigger alliance between the two companies. “The
ambition for us is that eventually we will have the full suite of services
available across Latin America,” Childs says. “We decided to really focus on
bringing two channels which both Televisa and BBC thought would have the best
chance of being successful. But this is just the start of our channel ambitions
for that market.”

Magazines,
home-entertainment and merchandising are other areas in which the two companies
could cooperate, both executives note. “It’s limitless,” Childs says. “There
are actually a lot of similarities between BBC Worldwide and Televisa. The more
time we spend together, it’s a very natural fit. We’re feeling very positive
about this and we’re just looking forward to what the next ten, 15 or 20 years
are going to bring as we work together in these markets.”

For more on the alliance, watch World Screen’s exclusive video interview with José Antonio Bastón, the corporate
VP of television at Grupo Televisa.

—By Mansha Daswani