Telemundo Showcases New Season

NEW YORK, May 16: At Telemundo’s Upfront presentation at New
York City’s Radio City Music Hall last night, the broadcaster’s president, Don
Browne, conceded that the network’s ratings were not where he wanted them to
be, but promised to grow ratings in every daypart in the upcoming season with a
slate of new original productions, developed exclusively for the U.S. Hispanic
market.

Noting that “content is the currency of the future,” Browne
stood behind the network’s strategy of producing its own content—versus
its competition, Univision, which culls much of its schedule from Televisa.
“We’ve gone from zero original productions [to being] the second-largest producer
of Spanish-language content” worldwide.

As part of its original content initiatives, Telemundo
unveiled a bi-coastal educational program, Taller Telemundo: Escritores,
designed to train telenovela writers. The program will be under the direction
of Babel star Adriana Barraza.

For its weekday prime-time schedule, Telemundo has added El
Otro Lado del Amor (The Other
Side of Love), written by Eric Vonn (Tierra
de Pasiones) and starring Lorena Rojas (El
Cuerpo del Deseo), Mauricio Islas (Los
Plateados) and Aylin Mujica (Marina). La Traicion (The Betrayal) is a period novela starring Mario Cimarro (El
Cuerpo del Deseo), Sandra Echeverria (Marina) and Gabriel Porras (Prisionera). Doña Bárbara, based on a Latin
American literary classic, stars Gabriela Spanic and Christian Meier. Las
Brujas de South Beach tells the tale of
three women in modern-day Florida who were sisters, and witches, in a past
life.

Idolos de Juventud (Youth
Idols), for summer 2008, meanwhile, was
billed at the presentation last night as the first telenovela with no
commercial breaks, with product placement woven into every episode.

Telemundo is enhancing its late-night strategy, scheduling
the weekly one-hour program Mas Vale Tarde,
hosted by Alex Cambert. Produced from Telemundo’s brand new broadcast facility
at Universal Studios City Walk Hollywood, Mas Vale Tarde features celebrity interviews, sketches and more.

Weekends will continue to be home to movies, from Hollywood
and Latin America. New to the weekend schedule is a dating game, 12
Corazones: Rumbo al Altar, a one-hour,
weekend spin-off of the network’s popular weekday daytime property 12
Corazones.