Sokol believes that, given the rapid pace of industry evolution, the streaming space can be challenging to navigate for U.S Spanish-speaking audiences
Alan Sokol, CEO and president of Hemisphere Media Group, Inc., believes that the novelas in their AVOD catalog outperform any other novela title on streaming platforms.
“An example is Moses and the Ten Commandments, a telenovela that aired on our cable channel Pasiones in 2023. It surpassed expectations on traditional television, becoming the most-watched telenovela on U.S. cable that year. Now that it’s available on our FAST Channel and AVOD, it’s generating impressive results. Additionally, our Turkish catalog is highly popular among platforms and viewers. We’re proud of our telenovela curation and will continue to bring viewers engaging stories from around the globe.”
Hemisphere also boasts a comprehensive film library for AVOD. As Sokol noted, “Films are a perfect complement and consistently perform well on various platforms.”
Sokol said price and choice are driving the growth of the AVOD market in the US Hispanic market. “There are more content choices than ever before for at-home viewership and not only are viewers able to choose from a large variety of content, but they can also enjoy it any time they want on multiple devices. And of course, now there are also more ad-supported choices that allow viewers to enjoy programming for free and viewers have shown that they will sit through commercials if the content is free.”
When asked about advertisers’ response to the growth of AVOD, Sokol stated that they are still transitioning from traditional linear models to streaming. However, this transition is rapidly evolving as new industry models are established.
“Each platform is establishing its KPIs and as they grow their subscriber base through brand awareness and premium content, the advertisers are also investing more in the streaming space. Even traditional MVPDs are growing their streaming operations to bring subscribers more cost-effective packages and give advertisers additional commercial avenues and time. The streaming space is evolving so rapidly, that the next time we check in, it might be a whole different ball game,” he pointed out.
Sokol believes that, given the rapid pace of industry evolution, the streaming space can be challenging to navigate for U.S./Spanish-speaking audiences. “Outside of the Latino-led platforms, the major platforms are still ‘hiding’ some of their Spanish-language or Latino content, making discoverability very challenging for USH audiences. Furthermore, there is still a large portion of the US Hispanic population, especially among recent arrivals or Spanish-dominant viewers that do not have an awareness of how the streaming world works outside of SVOD, so they might not know that there a great deal of content available for free that they can enjoy via AVOD or FAST channels. There’s an opportunity there to educate the USH consumer on their viewing choices and a big piece of that is that discoverability factor” refirió.
Hemisphere has expanded its FAST channel distribution to include more platforms, with additional partnerships in the pipeline.
Todo Cine and Todo Novelas Más Pasiones are available on ViX, Canela, Plex, fubo, Anoki, and Amazon’s Fire TV Channels.
WAPA+ launched on ViX and expanded its distribution this year to fubo, Fire TV Channels, and The Roku Channel, “where it’s performing exceptionally well,” he added.
“We just launched El Salvador 24 (ES24) on ViX and fubo with more distribution coming in the next month. Additionally, we are also working with some traditional MVPD services to incorporate our FAST offering to their streaming packages, like Comcast’s NOW TV Latino and Sling Freestream,” Sokol noted.
ES24 is the latest release in Hemisphere’s FAST Channels suite. ES24 is the first FAST Channel catering to the fast-growing U.S. Salvadoran community, which is already available on ViX and fubo.
“Bringing fresh content daily through our partnership with TCS, ES24 offers live news, sports analysis, entertainment, variety, and cultural programming.” Some highlights include newscasts Noticias 4 Visión Meridiano and Teledós Estelar, sports newscast DC4, sports talk show La Polémica, lifestyle talk show Liberadas, entertainment show Play, and game show Prendi2.
“For the rest of our streaming channels, Todo Novelas Más Pasiones just added La Tierra Prometida to its lineup bringing more of those biblical hits to the FAST screens. Super Chef Celebrities on WAPA+ is near its season finale with a brand-new season coming soon, and Todo Cine will feature horror fan favorites La Llorona trilogy during this year’s spooky season as well as a robust Mexican action and Caribbean comedy lineup all year long,” Sokol said.
