Tom Mohler of Olympusat: The future of Hispanic channel distribution is IPTV

Tom Mohler, CEO of Olympusat Holdings, emphasized that the future of distribution is in IPTV during the distribution session of the 10th annual Hispanic Television Summit held at the Marriott Marquis in New York. While today the paid TV systems can offer a little more than 50 Hispanic channels, with a distribution using IPTV, these systems have the capacity of offering 100 to 200 channels. “This is the future and all the operators are working on this” Mohler indicated. He also commented that Olympusat is working on this to construct its own scale economy to be able to leave aside the tiers of Hispanics. Rawdon Messenger, executive VP of Digital Media at Azteca America, said that there are still many opportunities for niche programming. “The number of alternative programming has increased dramatically, but there are still many opportunities for the niche. Who doesn’t want to reach a segment that represents 16% of the population in the U.S. – 50 million people?” he asked. Juanjo Durán, who is in charge of Strategic Alliances of Content at YouTube, praised the effort made by Azteca America in the digital space to complement their television content. He mentioned the network’s YouTube channel Irreverente as an example of this. Messenger indicated the importance of offering more channels in Spanish. “There has to be more equality to the English-language TV”.