Telemundo: We are developing a content incubator strategy per region: LatAm and Southern Cone, US Hispanic, and Spain

“It’s a great moment for us. Mexico and Hispanics are in vogue. We creators have to take advantage of this wave, where the world wants to know about us, about our culture. It is a great moment for those who dedicate themselves to content creation and production,” said Carlos Quintanilla, Senior Director of Original Development at NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, during his keynote with Ana Celia Urquidi, CEO of Atenea Media, on the first day of Conecta Fiction.

Quintanilla, who is the creative director of Armas de Mujer, the first original project for NBCUniversal’s Peacock, expressed his joy to be working with Telemundo Streaming Studios led by Juan Ponce, reporting to Marcos Santana of Telemundo Global Studios. “For me, it is like the Disneyland of content, I can generate and search for content in the market for streaming platforms. That is what we are devoted to. It is a different Telemundo from the one we know through the screen. It is a studio that tries to cover the demand of platforms for current content,” he highlighted.

He mentioned that the telenovela genre will remain for a while, “but it is not the same telenovela we were used to. It is being remastered. And that’s very fortunate for the creators of a genre that we are all passionate about,” he said. “Telling better melodramas, with production values, with twists. We like to explore melodramas with touches of comedy, or thriller. Other genres blend very well with melodrama. That is the challenge, how to tell melodramas without going against the genre,” he added.

For Quintanilla, to be relevant to the new audiences, they are using a content incubator strategy per region: Latin America, Hispanic US, Spain, and Southern Cone. “We are looking for regional talent able to create creative empathy for us. What we are looking for is that each region has a creative trigger of authors from the region who can be empathetic with the stories that the audience needs or wants. It is a bet that allows us to search for creative talent in each region,” he said.

He commented that in the area where he moves they are looking for short premium series, of eight episodes per season and three seasons.