HITN signs distribution agreement with major U.S. pay-TV operator

Hispanic channel HITN just signed an agreement with a major pay-TV operator for U.S. distribution featuring the TV Everywhere model.Eric Turpin, VP of Affiliate Distribution and Business Development of HITN, said to PRODU that in the coming weeks the company will disclose the name of the operator and the terms of the deal. The channel currently reaches 37 million homes in the U.S. through cable, telecoms and satellite providers.“What is interesting about TV everywhere is that most distributors have not embraced the Hispanic space. We feel this is going to change in the next three to five months as they start to roll out TV Everywhere and start to look at expanding this to all of the various groups in the United States that will be interested in that concept,” said Turpin.He indicated that for Hispanic channels, TV Everywhere presents a double challenge: firstly, a large portion of content comes from a wide variety of external sources, and secondly, there is the need to negotiate the content rights. “What we are doing in HITN is, as we renew our deals with content that we outsource, we want to make sure that we have the rights to make that content available in a TV Everywhere model as well as looking at other kinds of OTT devices and mobile and other applications that we think the Hispanic population who watch HITN would use to continue to consume the HITN product along with other Hispanic services that they watch,” added Turpin.