Miércoles Exploits Business Opportunity by Offering Streamers Hispanic Content Not Previously Shown in the U.S.

The partners at Miércoles Entertainment Studios—former Pantelion and Pantaya executives—have identified a business opportunity by offering Spanish-language content to streaming platforms that want to serve their Hispanic subscribers without needing a dedicated U.S. Hispanic team.

“Everyone is under a lot of pressure to reduce spending on staff, productions, marketing—every aspect of the business. And what has been one of the sacrifices made by U.S. companies? Having a team dedicated to the Latino market. They keep reducing the personnel focused on U.S. Hispanics, which requires expertise and is costly. Everyone knows this market represents 60 million people and is the only growing sector in the U.S., but these companies have other priorities. And not all American corporations have good coordination between the U.S., LatAm, and Spain. There are very few Americans who truly know and understand this and who can curate that programming,” said Jim McNamara, CEO of Miércoles Entertainment Studios.

He explained that they have been pitching various companies, and drawing from their extensive experience in Spanish-language programming and content offering, they have been building a catalog of about 100 titles—films and series—mostly new to the U.S. market, which they make available to clients.

The catalog includes titles such as Mesa de Regalos, “the number-one movie in Mexico in the last five years in theaters, which never found a home in the U.S.,” he noted. Mesa de Regalos is one of the titles included in the recently signed deal between Hulu and Miércoles.

He added that Miércoles Entertainment Studios is not offering thousands of titles, “because what we learned at Pantaya is that when the audience faces literally thousands of titles, it becomes difficult to make a decision.”

“We’ve tried to keep an offering that isn’t huge. Let’s say about 35 titles: five series and ten premieres, plus ten to fifteen films that may have already debuted on other platforms. They might be about five years old, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you. We refresh everything all the time. We believe there’s no need to have thousands of titles, but rather to reduce the number of months a title stays on a platform. Don’t leave it there for five years or indefinitely—move it. All platforms, even if they don’t say it, think the same way. We don’t need a ten-year license; with three to six months, our audience will watch it,” the executive explained.

McNamara said the agreement with Hulu is the first of several deals they are targeting with other streaming platforms.

THE COSTLY BUSINESS OF STREAMING

McNamara believes that the streaming business has three components.

“The first is the content, but there are two other aspects that are just as important and as costly as the content,” he noted.

“One is the technical side, which the public doesn’t care about. They just want to press a button on their TV or phone and have Netflix or HBO appear. And that is extremely complicated and expensive on a daily basis. You have to update phones and computers constantly. That’s also true on the streaming side, on every system. You have to update daily, and it’s costly and time-consuming—and the audience just wants it to work when they press the button. If it doesn’t work, they will cancel,” he said.

“The third aspect is how you acquire a subscriber and how you keep them. And if you lose them, how do you get them back? That is a completely different world—and very expensive,” he concluded.