June 6, 2007
Mexican Supreme Court Rules on Broadcast Licenses
Mexico's Supreme Court took a hammer this week and last to the Federal Law of Radio and Television. In a potentially far-reaching and historic decision, the Court last week ruled unconstitutional the automatic renewal of broadcast licenses. This week, the Court overturned three more provisions of the law. Specifically, the Court ruled against the twenty year term of broadcast licenses, the automatic allocation of digital rights and against auctions where the license goes to the highest bidder.
The now-gutted Federal Law of Radio and Television was approved last year by Mexico's Congress and featured a sweeping series of changes to the nation's broadcasting laws. The law was enormously favorable to the interests of Televisa and TV Azteca. So much so, that the legislation was popularly known as "la ley Televisa" ('the Televisa law').
Following last year's approval, in a rare display of Mexican nonpartisanship, three senators (one from each of the main political parties) asked the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of the law. Several provisions have been struck down relating to the regulation of the telecommunications industry. Still pending is a Court ruling on the provision that calls for broadcast licenses to last 20 years. That is expected sometime this week.
The Court left standing a provision that allows the government to grant preferential status to incumbent license-holders.
The decision will likely please Telemundo and other firms looking to enter the Mexican broadcast business and potentially loosens the Televisa-TV Azteca duopoly. Televisa and TV Azteca shares traded down following news of the Court's verdict.
Mexico's Congress will now likely have to pass new legislation.
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RCTV Shutdown
Last week's shutdown of Venezuelan broadcaster RCTV by President Hugo Chávez sparked a firestorm of international criticism. The European Parliament, Inter-American Press Association and Human Rights Watch and many other government and private organizations spoke out against the move as censorship of a critical media outlet.
The government said the move was the simple expiration of the network's broadcast license.
RCTV's signal was replaced by Television Venezolana Social, which is controlled by supporters of the President.
RCTV, formerly one of the nation's two largest broadcasters, provided favorable and biased coverage of the short-lived coup against Chávez in April, 2002. Since then, RCTV has provided vociferously critical and at times vituperative coverage of Chávez personally and of his administration. During the last presidential elections, RCTV openly called for viewers to vote against Hugo Chávez.
In sharp contrast, the private television network Venevision offers far more muted political coverage. Venevision is owned by the Cisneros family, which previously owned a substantial minority stake in Univision and continues to supply the U.S. network with programming. The head of Venevision is Cuban exile Gustavo Cisneros.
Even before the RCTV shutdown, the Chávez administration did not lack for airtime or positive media coverage. This is most notably true on state-owned broadcaster VTV. But government-mandated coverage on all television channels of Chávez speeches and his weekly call-in show Aló Presidente give the president copious amounts of airtime.
The government has also initiated an investigation against Globovisión, which has a much more limited reach than RCTV, accusing the station of inciting violence.
A separate investigation by the Venezuelan government is underway of CNN for allegedly "present[ing] political propaganda under the guise of news, in a systematic manner." CNN en Español and CNN International deny the accusation.
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Burhan Fatah brings an eclectic background to the online video business. The CEO of Sivoo Holdings, which describes itself as a "Internet TV network of multicultural on-demand entertainment," was born and raised in Pakistan. The son of a sporting goods manufacturer still remembers the stench of cowhide in his father's tannery. Fatah earned a physics doctorate by the age of "24 and a half years" as he puts it. After many years as a research scientist, he started and worked in a number of Internet businesses. Sivoo provides free movies and other programming online in Spanish, Hindi and Chinese. Hispanic Television Update recently spoke to Fatah about the online movie business, original programming plans and Sivoo's etymology. An edited transcript follows:
Q: What is the premise of Sivoo?
A: When you are away from your country you miss your homeland. There are millions of people in the U.S. who are immigrants who like to see news, entertainment, movies, music from back home. The idea is to serve multicultural groups who speak a language other than English and bring them entertainment from their home country.
Q: How did you decide which languages to offer?
A: There has to be a critical mass for each one of these languages, at least a million people for a business model to make sense. Obviously, Spanish is at the top of that list. Even though there is a lot of entertainment available already in Spanish but the numbers are so large even if we get a small percentage of that group that makes a lot of money.
The next group is Chinese, then Hindi and beyond that Russian, Italian and French followed by Korean and Vietnamese.
Q: Tell me a bit about your programming.
A: We already have contracts in place with a host of name brand broadcasters and producers such as Telefe from Argentian, Caracol from Colombia and Venevision, a whole set of companies from which we are getting traditional programming. Beyond that, we have an agreement with a company called ComedyTime, based in Los Angeles. It provides bilingual programming in English and Spanish. There is a huge demand from that segment of the population that is generally not satisfied by Univision and Telemundo. Plus we have our own studio in L.A. and very soon we are going to start producing our programs in English with a Hispanic orientation. All of our programming is VOD, so you can watch it when you want to.
Q: You've announced a slew of partnerships over the past few months — why so many?
A: Our business model is both B2C where the consumer can come directly to our site and watch our programming at Sivoo.com. However, a very big part of our strategy is B2B. That means, essentially we work with other entertainment companies that have a much bigger reach in target community and we distribute our programming. We’ve announced eight, ten deals in the last few months. This provides programming to viewers under our brand name. It gives us a much bigger exposure for our programs. And we will continue to add more and more partners.
Q: What does the name Sivoo mean?
A: It really doesn’t mean anything. It is a short name which is language-neutral, unique and it sounds good. It should have double Os because we want to replicate the success of Google and Yahoo.
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‘Top Chef’ Gets Latin Flavor
(Excerpted from the June 4 issue of Multichannel News)
Bravo wants to play to a larger and more Latino crowd this summer with Top Chef 3 Miami, the third season of its competition series.
Filmed in Miami Beach, Top Chef 3 is slated to debut June 13 at 10 p.m. The show will receive a fully baked multiplatform promotional treatment under the tag “Just When You Thought it was Safe to Go Back in the Kitchen,” as well as bilingual exposure in Hispanic markets through Bravo’s first-ever deal with sister network Telemundo.
Cablevision Boosts Spanish Tier
(Excerpted from the June 4 issue of Multichannel News)
Cablevision Systems has buttressed its iO en Español package, adding four new channels.
The fast-growing Spanish-language tier now includes NDTV-The Dominican Channel, Ecuavisa Internacional, Caracol TV Internacional and WAPA America, raising Cablevision’s iOe roster to 37 networks.
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The Alaska Journal of Commerce features an article about the Telemundo affiliate in Anchorage. "While the station has been broadcasting all-Spanish Telemundo programming since January, it hopes to attract more local viewers by offering a community calendar and coverage of important cultural events," according to the article. The marketing manager is quoted as promising "cheap, cheap advertising from $200 to $300 tops for a produced commercial, and some ads could even be cheaper than that."
For more ...
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