Interview with ON TV’s Bernarda Llorente & Claudio Villarruel

NEW YORK: World Screen spoke with Claudio Villarruel and Bernarda Llorente, the founders and presidents of ON TV Llorente & Villarruel Contenidos, about the company’s performance, its successful productions and plans for the coming months.

WS: How has ON TV Llorente & Villarruel Contenidos evolved since its inception four years ago?
LLORENTE: It has been a very good experience. We had to rethink a number of things once we had a production [company], at a time when television was changing, especially in the way TV programming is made. We have continued to do most of the things we were doing from the beginning, including scripted productions. We were lucky that our first telenovela, called Contra las cuerdas, which [we made] for a public channel, was nominated for an International Emmy Award, and our second series, Televisión x la identidad, saw for the first time two Argentine actors from the same series win the International Emmy. Now we just launched [a new installment of] Televisión x… called Santos y pecadores: Televisión x la justicia.

In Argentina we made the first channel designed from the ground up for digital television, which is a new way of thinking about television. It’s an environment where there are many more competitors and fewer resources to make [content]. Therefore, there’s a rethinking where one hedges their bets on creativity and not necessarily on great resources, as is happening in free TV. We have a channel called 360 TV Digital [available on a cable platform]. We also manage Radio del Plata and we made an HD [channel from that]. So, there are radio programs that are broadcast on television, not from a webcam but from a television setup. We’re actually joining the two platforms: radio and television.

WS: Tell us more about Santos y pecadores.
LLORENTE: Audiences received it very well. In Santos y pecadores, [we showed] the unjust side of justice. We didn’t follow a purely legal issue, but rather we touched on topics that often appear in the private sector, but are from the public space in the sense that they are issues that concern justice—from child molestation to violent family relationships. In the midst of that, we also touched on some resonant themes of injustice in more public cases, but mostly we tried to [present] issues that people can identify with and that could happen to anyone. One can be in a situation they never thought could happen and suddenly life or injustice, as it would be in this case, surprises them.

WS: Do you plan on making a fourth season in the Televisión x… series?
LLORENTE: We don’t know. Originally we were going to end with a trilogy. What happens is that other issues start to appear and we’re asked for other themes and everything depends on how we get hooked. [Ideas start to emerge like] education, a very interesting topic, as a trigger for a series of situations that we believe as a society we all need to reflect on.

WS: Your other productions include the late-night show El mundo desde abajo, which is now in its second season.
VILLARRUEL: We are very happy with the results [that the program has achieved]. It’s kind of a late-night show airing on [TBS veryfunny]. We produced it for Turner and probably in September we’ll start filming the third season.

WS: What has been the biggest challenge for the company?
LLORENTE: Making a channel from scratch. We went from handling the leading channel in Argentina—a channel with huge coverage—to forming a channel from scratch in another television setting. That experience [teaches] you a lot, but…it’s like starting all over again. This has probably been the most important challenge for the company.

WS: Are you connecting with audiences through social media and digital platforms?
LLORENTE: It’s been great! The challenge with social media is to expand [on the way people use it]. Until now, social networks have basically been used to comment on certain existing programs. The challenge of the new television paradigm is to give channels more serious participation, so that they integrate themselves with the television content. It has not really been achieved yet, beyond the attempts made by some [channels] to put tweets on screen or comment on some things.

WS: What are your plans and projects for the coming months?
LLORENTE: We are developing a pair of scripted shows that we’ve been asked for internationally. After the World Cup, we’re relaunching 360 TV Digital programming. We are focused on our radio program that also appears on television; we do a nightly television version. We will make the third season of El mundo desde abajo and we are developing a couple of entertainment [programs] that we think are very innovative, so we’re finishing polishing those.