Juan Pablo Gaviria

VP, Si Hay Ideas

Creative Development and Production VP, Teleset

Colombian native Juan Pablo Gaviria began working in the television industry in 1995 as an assistant to the producer of a soap opera, Leche, for Caracol TV. In 1998, he made his way to the independent Colombian production outfit Teleset as a second assistant director. Within his first year there, Gaviria was already directing a daily TV series for access prime time, Héroes de turno.

In 2001, Gaviria and José Antonio de Brigard, the president of Teleset, began exploring the emerging market of entertainment formats. They started buying rights to international formats and adapting them for Colombia and Ecuador. Gaviria was on the team that adapted the reality format Survivor for Colombian audiences. “[Teleset] was the first company to produce Survivor stripped Monday through Friday,” says Gaviria. “We adapted the Survivor format to be 78 episodes, where in the rest of the world it was 13 episodes.”

Since then, Gaviria’s interest in reality shows and entertainment formats continued to grow. He eventually took on the position of VP of creative development and production at Teleset. In this position, Gaviria has directed and executive-produced a number of entertainment formats, including five consecutive seasons of The X-Factor, three seasons of Dancing for a Dream, two seasons of Poker Face, and five seasons of La isla de los famosos. He is currently working on an adaptation of the game show format Power of 10 for Colombia.

This year, Gaviria and de Brigard decided to capitalize on their format experience with the official launch of a new Teleset company, Si Hay Ideas, which would focus on the production of original entertainment formats. “We were ready to start producing entertainment formats on our own, given the success we’ve had adapting formats,” notes Gaviria, who is now the VP of Si Hay Ideas. The company had its official launch at MIPCOM this past October with five original formats: the dating game Heart Beat, which pairs couples according to heart monitor results, the interactive quiz show SMS Attack, the adventure reality format Extreme Beach, the talent reality competition format Vocalist Wanted and the “docureality” format Freedom.

Si Hay Ideas also plans to unveil several new formats at NATPE in January, including the dating game Love’s Roulette, the hidden-camera show My Family’s Big Trip and the scripted comedy show Backstage. The company has already optioned the formats SMS Attack, Vocalist Wanted and Love’s Roulette to RCN in Colombia.

“As we’re starting, we’re trying not to rush anything,” notes Gaviria. “We’re starting to just investigate all the markets and what they need. We’re specializing in tailor-made formats and that’s the way we’ve been working.”

He continues: “One of our main interests is that all of our formats are adaptable, because we believe that you need to adapt the format to each country’s needs. We don’t just [create] huge ideas that are very difficult or impossible to produce. We have ideas that are down to earth and fairly simple to produce, although we also have classic big format reality shows.”

Gaviria is upbeat about the market for entertainment formats in Latin America. While he says that it has been changing, he has found that the region is now “very open to new ideas, new formats and new content,” particularly in countries like Chile and Mexico.

Si Hay Ideas has attracted some “keen interest” from Europe, but Gaviria hopes to build awareness of the company before embarking on an aggressive worldwide sales push. “First we want our company be known, and when people start seeing the different creative options within the market, we’ll be opening up to other countries throughout the world.”

—By Irene Lew