A Spanish-language television executive gently chided me yesterday for my coverage of last week's Hispanic Television Upfront in New York. The executive implied I unduly downplayed its significance. In last Wednesday's edition of the email newsletter Hispanic Television Update, I wrote:
"Little will be truly new at this year's Upfront. Sure, there will be the usual batch of distribution and programming announcements. But, also as usual, a good number of the shows announced at the upfront will never make the jump from press release to on-air."
I stand by what I wrote.
At the Upfront, liquid refreshments abound but any other kind of substance is scarce. What substance there is amounts to a question of image. What does abound is talk, talk, talk about shows that may or may not materialize. Not surprisingly, much of the resulting coverage is bubbly. Such as the ´news´ that J-Lo came up with the idea for her forthcoming Univision show while taking a bath.
The real news lies in the questions that network executives won't answer at the Upfront. It lies in what shows are canceled. And it lies buried deep inside an SEC filing that specifies how Univision CFO's six bedroom, nine bathroom Beverly Hills residence (but not the Beverly Hillbillies residence where Hobson's former boss A. Jerrold Perenchio lives) is being bought by the network for $9.6 million as part of a relocation package.
There was no real news made during the Hispanic television upfronts but there was plenty of advertising and spin and silence in the face of inconvenient questions.
I find Stephen Jay Gould's concept of punctuated equilibrium useful in explaining the stop-and-go development of Spanish-language television over the past forty-odd years. The last major event that prompted significant changes was General Electric's purchase of Telemundo. New ownership brought new ideas about in-house production and product integration. Ideas that have had a decidedly mixed performance but have undoubtedly re-shaped the Spanish-language television market. This year's Upfront simply won't be remembered for having accelerated the industry's transformation.
For that, everyone will have to wait for the upcoming federal jury trial that pits Televisa against Univision. The trial will take place in Los Angeles and is scheduled to start on Halloween. At stake, is the program licensing agreement between the two networks whereby Televisa provides Univision with the vast majority of its primetime lineup.
If, and this is a very big if, the trial results the termination of that programming agreement, then Univision would be forced to dramatically change how it conducts its business. The entire Spanish-language television business would change. Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. The other possible outcome of the trial is simply a ratification of the program licensing agreement. Or perhaps both parties will settle and skip the trial altogether. There are an awful lot of ifs and maybes hanging over Univision's future
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