NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises’ Beau Ferrari

More than 60 million strong and comprising 18 percent of the U.S. population, the Hispanic community is young and, before the pandemic, was contributing significantly to productivity and economic growth. They were also a determining factor in the presidential election. Beau Ferrari, the chairman of NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, tells World Screen about how the company is serving this diverse audience in multiple ways.

WS: What led to the recent realignment of Telemundo’s businesses?
FERRARI: We think about Telemundo Enterprises’ portfolio as a mirror of NBCUniversal, without the theme parks, with businesses across different genres and the breadth and scale to reach Hispanics. We have become the number one producer of Spanish-language original content in the U.S. and number two worldwide. Telemundo Global Studios, a centerpiece to our creative and content engines, produces premium scripted properties, many of which have been number one hits, regardless of language, and helped us become the number one Spanish-language broadcast network in weekly prime time for three consecutive years.

We also have our entertainment division, which powers our daytime schedule, prime-time live events, programming acquisitions and unscripted shows. We have Universo, our cable business. Telemundo Deportes, our sports division, has the rights to premium sports events, including the U.S. rights to the FIFA World Cup through 2026; the rights to Mexico’s most popular soccer team, Chivas, and the Olympic Games through 2032. Our news division, Noticias Telemundo, was home to DECISIÓN 2020 and all the amazing coverage that the news team provided during this election year. The Telemundo Station Group is a robust portfolio of 30 stations in all the major metro markets around the country. Then there’s Peacock Latino, with 3,000 hours of content, as a complement to what NBCUniversal is doing with Peacock.

We wanted to organize the company in a way that allowed us to continue to lead as the number one producer of Spanish-language content in the U.S. by focusing our award-winning creative teams on producing across all platforms while accelerating and growing our commercialization teams to best deliver and maximize monetization in the marketplace. We are achieving that through the Telemundo network, as well as our other platforms, including our full episode player, our digital properties and Peacock. With this new organization, we are in a stronger position to continue enhancing Telemundo Global Studios’ scripted long-format content production for all platforms and significantly strengthen our streaming offering across Peacock and other direct-to-consumer distribution opportunities. At its core, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises’ breadth is shown in our broadcast network and our station portfolio, while we position ourselves for growth in a rapidly changing media market driven by Latinos’ growing demand for culturally relevant storytelling across linear, digital and mobile formats.

WS: Could you give us an idea of how Telemundo’s viewership breaks down between linear, online and mobile?
FERRARI: We focus our company around our premium content—entertainment, sports and news—and we see high engagement across all platforms, including linear, due to that. We’ve had numerous prime-time number one hits on our network and across stations among Spanish- and English-language viewers. We expect the coming 2021 prime-time lineup, with a mix of reality and original Telemundo Global Studios productions, to be very strong. We’ve also had sports programming, including the Mexican League playoffs with Chivas, that was rated number one regardless of language across linear and our stations in various markets.
We’ve experienced record growth across other platforms. On YouTube, our flagship channel has been the number-one U.S. Hispanic broadcast network for four years running. We hit the 10-million subscriber milestone in July, and now we’re at 11.3 million subscribers, which outperforms any network on YouTube. With our Telemundo app, we reached 8 million total downloads to date, an increase of 31 percent from January to November of 2019. We’ve also had the highest engagement among Spanish-language networks across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

WS: How is Telemundo feeding the Peacock brand?
FERRARI: Telemundo contributed 3,000 hours of content to the streaming platform under the Peacock Latino brand, including the upcoming original dramedy Armas de Mujer (Women’s Weapons), starring Kate del Castillo, and other premium titles, such as 100 Días para Enamorarnos (100 Days to Fall in Love) and Betty en NY (Betty in NY). News and sports programming are also doing well on the platform, so we plan to increase that offering in the near future. Peacock Latino will continue to be an important part of our content ecosystem going forward.

WS: How are you working with advertisers?
FERRARI: Engaging the U.S. Hispanic market has become critical for any national brand due to the sheer size of this population—62 million, its youthfulness, continuing growth, and most importantly, upward mobility. U.S. Hispanic purchasing power is projected to reach $1.9 trillion by 2023. On the local level, our 30 stations have been performing very well with an influx of political advertising dollars on top of strong regular demand.

We work closely with Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships, and her entire ad sales team, who have been taking Telemundo to the next level. We are able to connect and grow with the audience across genres, screens and languages, as part of the broader NBCUniversal Hispanic approach. We’ve been able to engage more with the audiences than in the past with scale, influence and impact.

WS: How did Telemundo service the Hispanic community amid the challenges of 2020?
FERRARI: We have a long-standing commitment to providing our community with objective information and the resources to help them navigate an increasingly complex world. This has resulted in a high level of trust by our viewers that we must live up to, especially in such a challenging time like the past year.

During the pandemic, we increased our news coverage, adding nearly 15 hours a week of coronavirus-related stories, including prime-time specials, news segments and daytime content. In April, we partnered with the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to launch a nationwide campaign called Nuestros Negocios(Our Businesses), which spotlighted and promoted small and medium-sized Hispanic-owned businesses across our platforms to help them stay afloat.

The news division implemented our largest multiplatform political news coverage and civic engagement program to date, DECISIÓN 2020. Under this banner, we carried out multiple national and local polls alongside our stations group, expanded our news coverage with a half-hour, late-night weekend newscast, and aired exclusive sit-down interviews with both presidential candidates. We held numerous civic engagement campaigns and events to encourage participation in the 2020 Census and voter registration. We also leveraged our partnerships with NBCUniversal News Group, including the Decision 2020: 100 Days to Go election special and town halls with candidates. It was a comprehensive effort across all platforms to ensure we were staying connected and supporting our community during this unprecedented time.

WS: What did you have to do to get back into production following the COVID-19 shutdowns?
FERRARI: Our top priority has been to keep our employees safe and healthy while continuing to serve our viewers at a time when they need reliable information and entertainment more than ever. It required creative thinking and innovating, but we were one of the first networks in the industry to get productions back up and running. We implemented strict health protocols under the banner “Stay Healthy, Work Safe.” We trained employees, put up new directional and safety signage around our building, and required personal protective equipment on sets, coupled with daily rapid testing and temperature checks. Our studios rewrote scripts to reduce talent contact and interaction and moved scenes to outdoor settings. Thanks to these efforts, we were able to finish production of 100 Días para Enamorarnos and Falsa Identidad (False Identity). At one point, we had ten productions in different stages of the production cycle running simultaneously. We also produced the Billboard Latin Music Awards, a live event, with “production bubbles” designed to minimize the risk of exposure and contact between talent, crew and staff.

WS: What’s driving Telemundo Global Studios’ business?
FERRARI: Telemundo Global Studios’ president, Marcos Santana, has focused on developing original concepts, writing top-flight scripts, keying in on casting and evaluating international distribution viability, and we’ve had great results. Our most successful series to date, La Reina del Sur (The Queen of the South), won an International Emmy in 2020 for its second season, and the third season is in the works. We’ve also had great traction internationally with 100 Días para Enamorarnos and Betty en NY across different platforms. We have three shows that are premiering in January: Buscando a Frida (Looking for Frida), La Suerte de Loli (Loli’s Luck) and Exatlón Estados Unidos season four. We’re also gearing up to produce Malverde: El Santo Patrón (Malverde: The Patron Saint), a drama based on the life of Mexican bandit Jesús Malverde.