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A Spate of Rebranding for Spanish-Language Television

December 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The new name for the network will be UniMás. The network will offer new content and a consumer marketing campaign aimed at a younger, male Latino demographic. The rebranding of TeleFutura is also the latest effort from Univision to connect all of its properties under the Univision brand. The moves will be announced at an industry event in New York City on Monday, and the revamped network will make its debut on Jan. 7.

“We have been focused on making TeleFutura the undisputed No. 2 Spanish-language network in the U.S. behind Univision,” César Conde, the president of Univision Networks, said in an interview. “This new brand positioning is going to really identify and connect UniMás with the main mother ship brand of Univision.”

The rebranding of TeleFutura is just one of many Spanish-language television changes this year.

Many of the efforts may appear to be geared toward consumers, but they are also an attempt by the networks to attract dollars from advertisers wanting to cater to the growing Hispanic marketplace.

“Media companies are being forced to change because audience behavior is changing pretty radically,” said Karl Heiselman, the chief executive at Wolff Olins, the advertising agency that worked with Univision on a redesigh of its tulip logo, unveiled in October. “The Hispanic market is not the old stereotype of the past at all. It’s incredibly young and tech savvy.”

The Univision parent company presented a refreshed three-dimensional version of the green, blue, red and purple tulip logo, along with a new tag line “The Hispanic Heartbeat of America.”

“There was a huge opportunity for Univision to tell a more relevant contemporary story, not only to their audience but to a new audience and to their advertisers,” said Jordan Crane, a creative director at Wolff Olins. “When it was first done, the world was more flat. Now we have so many different platforms that this identity has to live on.”

In November, Univision announced a new logo for its Galavisión unit to celebrate that network’s 33rd anniversary. The new logo included a line underneath clearly identifying Galavisión as “A Univision Network” and connecting it further to the parent company. The new logo was designed by PMcD Design and featured an orange “G” and the tagline in gray.

At Advertising Week this fall, Telemundo announced a major rebranding effort of its own, including a new fire-red “T” logo that replaced its 11-year old blue “T” logo. The network, owned by NBCUniversal, will start the campaign this month with marketing initiatives including commercials featuring network personalities. The ads will run on networks like AE, Bravo, CNBC, Lifetime and MTV. The network’s morning show, “Un Nuevo Dia,” will be live from Times Square on Dec. 10.

“It is the year of the brands in the Hispanic space,” said Jacqueline Hernández, the chief operating officer for Telemundo. “When you’re doing a brand refresh, your goal is to keep, maintain and attract.”

The new campaign, created by the DixonBaxi Creative Agency, features bold hues of yellow, purple, blue and red and centers on the Spanish word “te,” the informal pronoun for “you,” with phrases like “Te sorprende” and “Te informa” (It surprises you. It informs you).

But despite all of UniVision’s branding efforts, content is still king. And while Univision attracts a significant portion of domestic Spanish-language television viewers, TeleFutura will have some catching up to do if it expects to compete with Telemundo. According to data from Nielsen, from Sept. 24 through Nov. 25, Univision averaged 3.7 million viewers in prime time, Telemundo had 1.2 million viewers and TeleFutura had 710,000.

Univision hopes to counter that momentum by striking content partnerships that hit close to Telemundo’s turf, including a multiyear agreement with the Colombian production company Caracol Televisión, which at the end of this year will cease to offer Telemundo first right of refusal on content.

Univision will also benefit from a new agreement with RTI Colombia, which distributes content through the Univision partner Televisa. Telemundo owns a 40 percent share in RTI, but new shows including “Quien Eres Tú” (Who are you?), from RTI, and “Made in Cartagena,” from Caracol, will make their debut on UniMás. A third dramatic series, a boxing-themed show called “Cloroformo” from Televisa, is also part of the new production slate.

While the network is setting its sights on edgier, alternative content, many of the shows will still feature the essential ingredient in many Spanish-language series: romance.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/business/media/a-spate-of-rebranding-for-spanish-language-television.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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NBC Struggles for Its Footing

November 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Oh yes they could — and they have. In a year in which NBC’s new corporate owner, Comcast, significantly increased the budget for fall shows, the ratings have continued to slide even as competitors have had success.

How bad are NBC’s prime-time ratings? Bad enough that most of the hours on NBC’s schedule, other than the potent “Sunday Night Football” package, have regressed in ratings this season. While every other network has generated a new hit, NBC, which needs hits the most, has not.

The already fourth-place rating in the financially crucial area of viewers ages 18 to 49 has dropped on average 11 percent, to a 2.5 (3.1 million) this year, from 2.8 (3.57 million viewers) last year. NBC has also lost more than 800,000 total viewers from last season. Several new shows never got off the ground, like “The Playboy Club” and “Free Agents,” both of which have been canceled.

It’s bad enough that without the big ratings supplied by the N.F.L. (which costs NBC more than $600 million a year to buy) NBC would be struggling to stay out of fifth place in the ratings. Without football, NBC is now tied with the Spanish-language network Univision in those 18-49 ratings.

To make the grim matters even worse, the only prime-time shows NBC previously owned that posted consistently good numbers, the comedy “The Office,” the drama “Law Order: Special Victims Unit” and the reality show “The Biggest Loser” are all down significantly this season. Not coincidentally, important cast members have left all three shows.

NBC was not the crown jewel in Comcast’s $13.75 billion purchase of NBC Universal early this year, but there were hopes inside the company and among investors that the new owners might begin to revive the once-mighty network’s moribund prime-time schedule and attract more ad dollars.

So far at least, the opposite has happened. In September, the new chief executive of NBC, Stephen B. Burke, told a media conference in California, “No network has ever been as far behind financially as NBC is,” citing prices for prime-time commercials that are consistently 20 percent less than what its competitors can charge advertisers.

Comcast’s chief executive, Brian L. Roberts, did not even mention the network on Comcast’s earnings call with investors last week. Instead he raved about the health of the NBC Universal cable channels, which drive the profitability of the division. Those cable assets increased revenues by 12 percent, to $2.1 billion.

Robert Seidman, the co-editor of TV by the Numbers, a ratings Web site, said Comcast “knew what it was buying and knew what it was getting with the broadcast network.”

But the network Comcast bought had several pillars outside of prime time — the “Today” show, “The Tonight Show” and “Nightly News” — that had weathered the storm. Lately, there have been concerns inside the network that even those stalwarts might finally be subject to fallout from prime time’s underperformance. One senior news executive, who asked not to be identified commenting on the entertainment division, said, “Prime time is painful.”

But for the moment at least, those concerns are more about shrinking leads over competitors than shrinking audiences. “Today,” which hasn’t lost a week in the ratings in almost 16 years, has maintained its audience (even adding to it slightly) this season, though the No. 2 show, ABC’s “Good Morning America” had added more viewers and closed what was once a yawning gap to just a sizable one. ABC has also inched closer in the evening news ratings, though NBC has added viewers to that top-rated program as well.

In late night, which traditionally has a closer relationship to prime-time ratings, some impact is noticeable. “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno, which enjoyed more than 15 years of dominance over CBS’s “Late Show With David Letterman” (not counting the period of upheaval when Conan O’Brien replaced Mr. Leno), has fallen behind CBS four weeks out of the first six this season in those 18-49 ratings — the first time that has happened since 1994.

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The Media Equation: From MTV to Building Afghan TV

September 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Given that Mr. Freston ran and later oversaw MTV Networks for 17 years, building a channel that changed broadcasting and the culture at large, you might guess that he was plotting the next television youthquake. After all, people are still complaining that MTV simultaneously sexed-up and dumbed-down American culture. So what kind of caper is Mr. Freston fired up about? Here’s a hint: That very day, a missile had landed on the production facility he was going on and on about.

The missile strike was in Afghanistan, where Mr. Freston lived during the 1970s when he was in the clothing business. Now he is serving as a board member and adviser to the Moby Group, which owns a burgeoning string of television and radio networks in a country where simply owning a television was illegal not so long ago. Forget about wanting their MTV, Afghans just wanted their TVs.

The Moby Group owns Tolo TV, a Dari language network; Lemar TV, which beams out in Pashto; two FM stations; and Farsi1, a joint television venture with the News Corporation that serves millions of Farsi speakers in Iran as well. When the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, it all but criminalized most of pop culture, so it’s remarkable that Moby is broadcasting shows in which men and women interact, often to hilarious effect, and the radio station has a male and a female D.J. bantering away the morning. And the audience apparently is there: Tolo TV has a 45 percent market share, according to Saad Mohseni, the head of Moby.

In Afghanistan, many women still wear burqas, and freedoms are limited, so working with the guy who helped bring “Beavis and Butt-Head” into public consciousness would not seem especially helpful. But Mr. Mohseni said Mr. Freston has been critical to the enterprise.

“He is a prolific e-mailer and always available for making connections for even the smallest things,” said Mr. Mohseni, speaking by phone during a visit to the United States last week from Afghanistan. He said that Mr. Freston had introduced him to Rupert Murdoch, among others. “When he comes here, he talks with the producers, the managers, the people doing the work,” Mr. Mohseni said.

In the ’70s, Mr. Freston ran a clothing company called Hindu Kush — “I had no idea what I was doing,” he said — out of Kabul and New Delhi. He developed a lasting crush on Afghanistan and now, more than 30 years later, he’s traveling there about three times a year.

He has time on his hands because in 2006 he parted ways with Sumner Redstone, the founder of Viacom, which owns MTV. The reason? Because Mr. Freston failed to buy MySpace. “One of the best deals I never made,” he said, smiling in retrospect. He now sits on the board of DreamWorks Animation and serves as chairman of the One campaign, the African poverty initiative co-founded by Bono.

In addition to working with Vice Media, he does consulting for Oprah Winfrey, a broadcast superstar who has discovered that starting your own cable channel has its challenges. But his work with Moby combines his enduring interest in Afghanistan with the belief that storytelling can help change a nation. “All Americans ever see of Afghanistan is the brown mountains in the war footage and things getting blown up, but when you spend time at Tolo TV, you get a feeling of what this place could be,” Mr. Freston said.

Unlike some foreign affairs analysts, he’s optimistic about the country’s future. “People assume that when the U.S. leaves, the Taliban will just resume control, but Afghanistan has become a different place because independent media has become an instrument of social change.”

A popular soap opera from Tolo TV, “The Secrets of This House,” has frankly discussed the gender inequality, domestic abuse and government corruption, all in the name of entertainment.

Cynthia P. Schneider, professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University, said that it’s hard to underestimate the value of such programming, which the rest of us take for granted.

“Last year, 10 million people watched the finale of ‘Afghan Star,’ which is one third of the people in the country,” she said, referring to the Afghan version of “American Idol.” “You have men and women in a competition that is based on merit, which is unusual in a tribal society. And the results are settled by voting, which is very important.” She added, “In a country where nothing else seems to work, independent media has been a huge success story.”

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com; Twitter.com/carr2n

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