Telemundo’s Perla Farías: We are working simultaneously with 12 projects in different development stages

The transition from the telenovela tradition to modern times was the topic of the panel “Transitioning Telenovela Traditions for Today” in the framework of the past Hispanic Television Summit in New York.Lucía Ballas-Traynor, Hispanic sales and marketing veteran was the moderator of the debate and the panelists were Perla Farías, VP Novela Development, Telemundo; Alex Sepiol, senior VP Original Scripted Programming, USA Network and Alan Sokol, president and CEO, Hemisphere Media Group, Inc. Farías from Telemundo said that original production is a key element for the channel and that they currently have about 12 projects in different development stages. She mentioned that the network has a broad range of original genres, highlighting superseries and now music biography series. She explained that superseries are a new genre in the US Hispanic market, which combines elements from the telenovela -such as drama and love stories- with more exciting aspects of series, such as action. For his part, Sokol from Hemisphere Media highlighted that there is a huge opportunity in Spanish for scripted series that is the distribution of that content in other platforms around the world. The panel also made reference to the phenomenon of Turkish telenovelas. For Sokol, they are an indicator that the world is increasingly smaller. “They have been successful because they have a faster pace, they’re shorter and very attractive for young people”.