The Buyers Agenda

Jacqueline Cantore

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Senior executives discuss buying priorities and pinpoint the genres and shows that most appeal to their territory.

Jacqueline Cantore
Vice-president, programming, MTV Latin America
“MTV LatAm is in about 16 million homes and targets 12 to 24 year-olds. Viewers in the north tend to be more attracted to lifestyle and reality shows while those in the south look for more music in the schedule.

Colombia has a strong interest in US urban music trends. In terms of programming breakdown, around 40% of our content comes from the MTV US mothership, around 35% is original LatAm content and the balance is acquisitions.

These can come from anywhere. They key is that we are looking for shows that are fresh and innovative. We picked up an animated show called Sex Police, which stars a condom as a police officer, and it worked well. We also took some elements of Gamer TV from the UK and repurposed them for our audiences. Irreverent animation also works for us.”

Flavio Medeiros
Senior sales executive LatAm Granada International
“Pay-TV channels such as HBO, Discovery, MTV/VH1 and Cosmopolitan continue to be the most important for British distributors because they need content from every genre.

I’d expect to see more opportunities in that sector as companies like Telefónica, Brasil Telecom and Telmex expand into the pay-TV market. But there are also opportunities in the free-to-air market. Buyers here are not resistant to British programming, they just don’t know enough about it.

There’s no question that being based here and speaking the local languages makes a difference. We will soon sign some deals which will demonstrate that it is possible to sell British content to terrestrial networks here.”

Goyo Garcia
Head of acquisitions, TV Bandeirantes, Brazil
“TVB has seen many changes since last year. We secured rights for some of the main Brazilian football competitions.

In addition to this, we are acquiring feature films, series, animation, formats and sitcoms again. We are having very good results with feature films and have some new attractions such as That ’70s Show. We have no preferred suppliers in terms of country of origin.

We recently closed deals with companies from the UK, Japan and Germany. Most productions are from the US, but we buy from a wide variety of nationalities. As for MIP, we’ll mainly be focusing on short clips, fillers and segments to be used in our entertainment, lifestyle and sports magazine shows.”