Made in Spain

This feature originally appeared in the MIPTV 2012 issue of TV Europe.

 

Arguably one of the most dynamic television markets in Europe, Spain has seen its share of alternating cycles of growth and consolidation in the last two decades. Now more than ever before, it is struggling to adjust to the reconfiguration of major players in the market—a situation exacerbated by the deep recession that has hit the country. The current upheaval is full of uncertainties for broadcasters and production companies alike.

 

The first wave of consolidation hit the pay-TV sector, when the market could not sustain two competing satellite platforms, and narrowed it down to only one. The second wave hit free TV. In 2009, the commercial network Telecinco acquired Cuatro, and at the end of last year, Antena 3 merged with LaSexta.

 

All along, the public broadcaster Radio y Televisión Española (RTVE) has been struggling with its funding. In January 2010, the government imposed a new financing model, which included a ban on advertising and imposed a tax on telecoms, commercial networks and pay-TV companies to make up for RTVE’s lost advertising revenue. There is talk that the government may be forced to revoke the ban, as it needs to reduce its subsidy to RTVE, and since the public broadcaster could not function on such a limited budget, it would need the additional revenue provided by advertising.

 

Not surprisingly, consolidation, the recession, the subsequent decline in advertising and tightening of production budgets, and the numerous new digital channels with limited capacity to commission shows, have all hit Spain’s production companies hard. Audiences have become used to the significant choice of programming that a competitive landscape can provide. Broadcasters certainly want quality but don’t have the funds to maintain high license fees for programs. The situation is so difficult that some broadcasters are threatening to cancel shows—even very successful ones—because they just don’t have enough money.

 

“It’s really expensive to produce content utilizing your own resources, so that’s why we’re focusing on news,” says Santiago González, the director at TVE. “In other genres, like entertainment, we try to produce 80 percent of our schedule in-house. It’s harder to make great fiction internally, due to the scarcity of manpower, but also because at TVE we have a two-pronged approach: on the one hand we use our own resources, but on the other we try to boost the Spanish media industry, and that approach is not always easy.”

 

During 2010, TVE’s main channel, La 1, was the most-watched network in Spain. It averaged a 16-percent audience share in its first year without advertising. Three episodes of Águila Roja, produced by Globomedia, were among the 50 most-watched shows, with shares of nearly 30 percent.

 

However, RTVE decided to cut its programming budget by nearly €200 million for 2012, which could jeopardize the production of new episodes of Águila Roja and Cuéntame cómo pasó, despite the fact that both are hit series. The fate of these shows will be decided once the pubcaster’s final budget is set.

 

Telecinco and Antena 3 have also had to rethink their strategies for producing fiction in 2012 as their resources have been limited by the advertising crisis. According to a top executive at Mediaset España, the owner of Telecinco and Cuatro, “The party is over. We’re [waiting to see if there will be] an improvement in the economy and the advertising market. It’s not about cancelling products, but rather assessing costs. We have to produce less expensively. The numbers don’t add up.”

 

Should adverse conditions persist, Telecinco could delay the launch of a number of shows, including the series El don de Alba, the reality shows MQB and Supervivientes, and the Spanish version of The Voice. Antena 3 could have to withhold the premieres of El tiempo entre costuras, Cuentos del siglo XXI and Imperium, as well as the talent show El número uno.

 

“It’s a challenge to produce in Spain because costs are so high and TV networks’ budgets are increasingly restricted,” says José Antonio Salso, the acquisitions and sales manager at Antena 3 Televisión. “Despite that fact, prime-time and early afternoon series still have significant production budgets, but there’s currently more experimentation with new production formulas.”

 

Salso highlights the high-end telenovelas Gavilanes and La Reina del Sur, both co-produced with Telemundo, but states that these days, everyone has less money to spend and is therefore forced to find more creative ways of making shows.

 

“It has to do with finding an idea and trying it out to see if it works,” explains Silvia Cotino, a representative of the international sales department at Mediaset España, the owner of Telecinco. “Evidently, there are many risks that networks take every day. Sometimes they miss the mark and sometimes they don’t. We try to get it right, but it’s not always possible.”

 

Telecinco works with companies like Globomedia, Ida y Vuelta and Plural Entertainment to make quality productions like Aída, “which is a clear example of a long-running series that continues to garner success week after week,” says Cotino. However, Telecinco has not been making long-running series recently, preferring productions like Tierra de lobos or Punta Escarlata that run between one and three seasons, as is usually the case with dramas in Spain.

Spain’s more than 200 production companies collectively saw their revenues decline by 6 percent in 2010 as networks demanded high-quality shows for lower prices.

 

Globomedia currently produces successful shows including Águila Roja, Aída, El barco and Punta Escarlata. The company makes an average of 1,200 hours of programming a year and is currently working on various projects, including Luna, el misterio de Calenda with Antena 3, which will air on the network in prime time; and an untitled comedy set in a fashion magazine, in co-production with Mediaset España to air on Telecinco.

 

“In the ’90s we had to deal with [broadcasters importing] fiction from North America, and we all know they’re great producers and have a lot more money,” says Daniel Écija, the president of Globomedia. “We believe local sensibilities are very important and we learned that the difference was we had less money, but we still wanted to make a great product. So we decided on comedy, love, and emotions. I believe Latins live these themes in a very particular way and we’ve tried to speak to the emotions and feelings. Sometimes, when you have to compete against series in English, local settings and subject matter make a difference.”

 

Spain’s top content producers are looking to the international market for new opportunities. “2011 was a complicated year everywhere, but the balance we came up with at RTVE was positive,” says Rodolfo Domínguez Alfageme, the commercial director at the company. “The truth is, our natural market is Latin America and we’ve had substantial growth with fiction series, due to the success and acceptance they’ve had, not only in Spain but elsewhere, series such as Cuéntame cómo pasó and Amar en tiempos revueltos.”

 

Imagina International Sales is the distribution arm of Grupo Imagina. It has a catalogue of some 9,500 hours of programming and more than 200 titles covering every genre for television.

 

“Imagina International Sales’ results in 2011 were very good in general, even better than we expected,” says Laura Miñarro, the company’s sales manager. “I think it’s mainly due to our catalogue, which includes product that customers are looking for.”

 

Miñarro points to the excellent results garnered by El barco and Punta Escarlata, which has sold into all of Latin America, and Águila Roja, distributed in the U.S. Hispanic market and into a few Latin American countries as well.

 

Clearly, the crisis has forced everyone to look beyond Spanish borders and expand their horizons wherever they can.