Orestes Aja Of Atresmedia Internacional: “Atresplayer Is Allowing Us To Improve Distribution Agreements With Our Main Partners”

Orestes Aja Gurría, director of Atresmedia Internacional, told PRODU that this year, despite the pay TV industry going through a moment of maturation, it continues to generate business and value.

“Without going any further, this year, due to contract term reasons, we had to renew major agreements and we have been working through the difficulties with good results. We have renewed all our agreements so far, consolidating the linear business and establishing a new growth business model with Atresplayer,” said Aja during Jornadas Internacionales.

He added that the recent agreement announced in September for the integration of Atresplayer into Flow “demonstrates that model we now want to expand, which is to maintain and consolidate the linear business. Linear generates the habit, and growing consumption with Atresplayer, because Atresplayer is the tool that is allowing us to improve distribution agreements with our main partners,” he noted.

He added that they do not view linear versus streaming. “We believe that linear has a value backed by audience and by distribution partners. The flagship channel is Antena 3 in our case, a channel that every day generates recurrence, a daily appointment with the viewer, and brings that value to the ephemeral, to the fact that if you watch it at a given moment it is interesting and if you watch it later maybe it isn’t anymore, and then the on demand catalog, VOD, Atresplayer, generate the value of increasing or amplifying consumption in households with our brands. That’s how we see it,” he stated.

A TV MODEL THAT COMPLEMENTS LINEAR WITH STREAMING

He recalled that September marked the celebration of Antena 3 Internacional’s 30th anniversary, “quite a journey for a channel that remains relevant, that remains very present in the industry, and now we are looking ahead.”

He highlighted that this is a new stage, of a more mature market that is adapting to new consumption habits and new commercial strategies. “Distribution partners, operators are modulating their offerings, and from our point of view, and in a strategy developed from the Atresmedia group, what we export is a TV model that works, that complements linear with streaming, and we have the experience, the knowledge and the team to keep providing value for the next 30 years,” he said.

He mentioned that the goal now, after celebrating Antena 3 Internacional’s 30th anniversary, is to keep building value recognizable by the audience and by partners. “And for that we believe the model we need to keep working on is the one we want to strengthen now, which is that we can evolve historic agreements by incorporating Atresplayer. That would be the great closing of one stage and the opening of new goals with our distribution partners. The example this year has been Flow, and also Claro video, where early in the year we opened Atresplayer to the entire subscriber base and it is now perfectly integrated into Claro video customers’ entertainment hub,” he said.

THE FAST BET IN LATAM

Aja referred to the FAST channel model, where at the moment they have a more male-skewing channel -Zona Investigación- that reaches a target more focused on factual consumption, true crime, journalism, investigative reporting, “and which we believe also has a consumption pattern that isn’t tied to sequential content, meaning you can tune in at any time of day and watch content that may or may not interest you, but you don’t need to have seen all the previous programs or episodes of that format,” and then they have telenovelas and series in Spanish, courtesy of Emocionatres.

“And with that portfolio, which isn’t very wide in terms of channels, we are trying to be present in one of the distribution windows that are available today, which are FAST channels. It is not a substitute model, it is a complementary model, and we believe it is important to be present in all possible distribution windows,” he concluded.