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HISPANIC TV UPFRONT REPORT-2017 EDITION HispanicAd.com/HispanicMarketOverview.com
A WORLD OF DIGITAL POSSIBILITIES
With OTT opportunities not disappearing anytime soon, could a Hispanic-market specialist such as a Univision/Fusion or Telemundo/Universo enter the fray successfully?
“I think OTT players like Netflix and digital MVPDs like Sling, DirectTV Now, Playstation Vue, YipTV, YouTube TV, and the new Hulu Live offer interesting opportunities for Hispanic media companies,” Waterston says.
She offers a few reasons why she believes this is the case.
“On the most basic level, more distribution is better than less distribution,” Waterston says. “But also, the more content-driven, visual navigation and personalized recommendations offered in the digital space can help introduce these media brands to new audiences. Telemundo, for example, has made great strides to create high-quality, highly entertaining content that should get the attention of wider audiences, but in a channel-number-driven environment, it’s difficult to imagine that happening. In the digital space, someone who just binge-watched, let’s say, ‘Breaking Bad’ or ‘Narcos,’ might find ‘El Chema’ in their suggestions. Fusion has great content that can appeal to an audience wider than just Latinos. In the traditional MVPD space, their possibilities to reach a broader multicultural millennial audience would be killed if they were on a Latino tier. But, in the digital space, those barriers do not exist.”
Asked if broadcast TV still the driver in the U.S. Hispanic market, Waterston paused. That’s because, in her view, the answer is obvious: Broadcast TV is the driver for all TV, not just Hispanic TV.