Government Controlling Networks

While we have learned so much about telenovelas in class the one think that has grabbed my attention the quickest is the laws around the telenovelas in Venezuela. I was looking back through my notes, and I actually wrote “OMG” in a section because I was so surprised by all of the rules. I could not believe how one day a network is thriving and in its prime, then the next day it is shut down by the government. A whole entire network can be shut down in a matter of seconds due to the strict government rules.

            Each network has a set of lawyers who go through scripts and make sure they abide by the laws. A fear every network has is being shut down. The unfortunate thing is that these lawyers are much stricter than the laws due to fear of being shut down. One example that I remember Dr. A mentioning in class is that a show is not allowed to differentiate between beer, wine, or mixed drink. The reasoning is that these drinks represent a different social class. The actors and actresses have to say “it,” when referring to any drink to keep everything equal. Venezuela quickly suffered as telenovelas were having to be put on hold to match the law.

            This became very evident in the Chavez era. I remember Dr. A talking about the rapid decline of Venezuelan telenovelas which is difficult for me to wrap my mind around since Venezuela is the place telenovelas began. In 2010, there was only one Venezuelan telenovela on the air from July to November. The show was La Mujer Perfecta. Venezuelan writers were having to try a new tactic since they had lost their time spots on TV. They needed politically safe content that would help bring back the love of Venezuelan telenovelas. The author decided to target Venezuelan’s obsession with their physical appearance. By November, La Mujer Perfecta won Venevisión back the 10 p.m. time slot. While La Mujer Perfecta was on Venevisión, the government demanded the network stop showing three shows due to violence or mocking Venezuela. Just when Venevisón was regaining its power, it was quickly stripped as they suffered financial losses because they had already bought these series. This demonstrated how quickly the government can step into a network and completely change the direction of the network.

Self-censorship and strict monitoring keep Venezuelan telenovelas on air. Not one network wants to be shut down, so everyone complies with the law. One of the things I do not understand is what does the government actually gets from this?

El impacto de las regulaciones en los medios

A lo largo de este semestre, hemos pasado muchas clases comparando diferentes culturas y cómo aceptar diferentes países tiene opiniones diferentes. Como discutimos en clase, la regulación puede tener un gran impacto en la producción y el consumo de las telenovelas y los medios en general. Específicamente, en países como Venezuela, el gobierno ha tomado medidas enérgicas contra su naturaleza reguladora de los medios de comunicación. En los años 90, Venezuela tenía cinco estaciones de televisión principales que producían telenovelas.Hoy en día, solo hay cuatro, dos de las cuales ya no hacen telenovelas, y las otras dos son administradas por el gobierno. El gobierno, a través de la Ley de Contenido de Medios de Comunicación, regula lo que se dice o no se dice en la televisión. Hemos discutido mucho en clase durante el semestre pasado sobre la suerte que tenemos de estar en los Estados Unidos donde el gobierno no tiene nada que ver con todo lo que hacen los medios. Me ha parecido muy interesante durante el último semestre aprender más sobre las influencias que los gobiernos de otros países tienen sobre los medios, así como la reacción de los medios a diferentes políticas o decisiones políticas.


Mi telenovela, Sin Senos Sí Hay Paraíso tiene su sede en Colombia. Si bien no nos enfocamos específicamente en las regulaciones colombianas en clase, a través de mi propia investigación, manteniéndome al tanto de las noticias, y ahora viendo esta telenovela, puedo ver la insatisfacción general que tienen los colombianos con su clima político. Es evidente en esta telenovela, a través de la trama y la trama, que Gustavo Bolívar está hablando en nombre de todos los colombianos para mostrar la corrupción política que enfrenta su país. A través de La Diabla, vemos que si tienes dinero, tienes la capacidad de comprar agentes de la policía, de influir en funcionarios del gobierno como el Alcalde y de escapar de crímenes horribles como el asesinato.

Lo que me parece interesante de esto, en comparación con países como Venezuela, es el hecho de que Telemundo pudo mostrar esta telenovela durante tres temporadas. Como aprendimos en clase, a partir de la década de 2000 en Venezuela, la televisión venezolana ya no podía producir contenido crítico para el gobierno, no se permitía ningún contenido político, junto con muchas otras regulaciones. La comparación entre los dos países muestra cómo algunos países, como Venezuela, no tienen tolerancia para opiniones diferentes y su gobierno está tratando de controlar todo lo relacionado con los medios de comunicación. Si bien Colombia tiene sus propios problemas, como país, son más progresistas en permitir la libertad de los medios. Sin embargo, al comparar estos dos países con los Estados Unidos, un país que valora los medios de comunicación y la primera enmienda, podemos ver cuán afortunados somos de estar basados ​​en un sistema de democracia.


Se supone que los medios de comunicación son una salida para aquellos que expresan su satisfacción e insatisfacción con respecto a sus vidas. Sin la libertad de esta expresión, ¿en qué se convertirán finalmente los medios de comunicación? Ver mi propia telenovela y aprender sobre otras telenovelas a través de las presentaciones de consumo, es muy interesante y preocupante pensar cómo será la presencia de los medios de comunicación a medida que nuestros hijos o nietos crezcan.

The Business Side of Telenovelas

Throughout my research for the consumption project, I became extremely interested in Telemundo's business strategy to fuel consumption. Numerous articles detailed Telemundo's plan to connect with a new generation of Latinx peoples and an underlying goal to beat their number one competitor: Univision. The most interesting aspects of Telemundo's business strategy is the manner in which they describe the new form of viewership and changes within the Latinx community, the multi-platform approach and their assessments of the "traditional" telenovela. Additionally, the business component relates heavily to public relations in the regards to audience analysis and promotions.

In class, we have learned that the telenovela has become implanted as a daily part of life. Series air daily and it essentially becomes a family affair. However, Telemundo executives note that habits are being replaced with choice for media-consuming Hispanics. This is not a new trend. Many media platform, especially those targeting Americans, noticed changes in 2015 during the presidential elections. Topics, debates and opinions became a part of everyday life and spilled into the media. Hispanics viewers saw many of the issues at the forefront of politics as a point of concern. Cesar Conde, a chairman of NBCUniversal Telemundo stated, “Hispanics are a growing cultural, political and economic powerhouse influencing every aspect of our country. This is a young, social and mobile segment that is increasingly setting trends, influencing pop culture and becoming the new mainstream, representing the single-largest growth opportunity for corporate America,”. Conde is correct – the Latino Times provides some key facts about young Latinos who are among one of the fastest growing populations. Like all young people, this group enjoys being innovative and mixing cultures and finding values in the American and traditional Latinx community and it must be reflected to continue having high consumption rates. So how does Telemundo react?

Telemundo created a business strategy called the multi-platform approach. Since 2015, the network has implemented super series, reality television and access to exclusive sporting events. The network has even expanded the content to introducing biopics of legendary entertainers. Many of these approaches mimic some American-styles of entertainment. The super series keep our attention and provide a twist on the traditional telenovela. Of course, the viewers still want the love, heartbreak, drama and intensity of the telenovela but with the options of seasons. Reality television reaches everyone, especially today's millennial. We can consume the emphasized drama of everyday life without it directly affecting us. And lastly, sports. I can personally connect to the consumption and strategy behind adding exclusive sporting events because of the 2018 World Cup. The World Cup played on the office televisions almost everyday throughout my internship. Those fans had a variety of access through Telemundo's cross-platform deal meaning it was one the main ways to consume the event for sports lovers. Telemundo's business reaction to a new generation and the yearning for increased consumption resulted in a new platform that could appease everyone. 

In all, the business side of telenovelas is extremely interesting as it ties in various aspects of marketing and public relations. Many of the moves made by Telemundo answered the question of, "how do we keep people interested?". Throughout the classes, I've learned that the way to make people consume, is to keep them yearning for more. The executives pinpoint the aspects of shows that keep people interested, hence why Telemundo moved towards super series versus the traditional telenovela. Business executives enact change through financial means and strategy. Of course, we can thank the writers, directors, stylist, etc., but it is the executives who get the final say and power to truly drive consumption and production. 

Kate del Castillo will be in Atlanta on Dec 3rd and 4th for anyone interested in meeting her! She's promoting this tequila brand.

Telenovela Influencers

Throughout my study of telenovelas (both in class and on my own) I have discovered the immense level of influence that the actors as well as the telenovelas themselves have on their audiences. We have studied this in class through consumption patterns: noticing the ways that viewers devote whole parts of their lives to creating fan pages, social media accounts, and even personalized merchandise to reflect the telenovelas that they love best. The most interesting aspect this to me has been reading the thousands of comments on instagram posts representing fictional tension/conflict between characters. Viewers comment using aggressive language and even go to the extent of threatening one another in the defense of their fictional characters. After getting engrossed in the comments I find on social media accounts for my particular telenovela, La Reina del Sur, it is impossible for me to ignore the great impact that these actors (and even their fictional characters) have on their audiences.

I have observed the influence of telenovelas most recently through a post by Kate del Castillo, actress who plays the protagonist in La Reina del Sur, Teresa Mendoza. Kate posted a photo of herself encouraging fans and others to not take their democracy for granted and go vote. This post got over 60,000 likes and hundreds of comments, sparking a conversation between viewers. Many of the conversations that arose were in agreement with Kate, using the post as a platform to encourage one another to vote in the upcoming elections. Some of the comments were also negative, as expected when politics is being discussed, but overall I was impressed to see respect among the majority of Kate del Castillos close fans. 

Learning about telenovelas and the impact/influence that they can have on both individuals and society as a whole has opened my eyes to the ways telenovelas have the ability to initiate change. The intense fan following of these productions allows producers the power to encourage good things (such as voting) but also comes with great responsibility. I think that this tool should be utilized more in telenovelas both on screen and off, using characters and actors to encourage their viewers to do the right things and make the world a better place.   

The Effect of Regulations on Telenovelas

     As we saw in class, regulation can have a huge effect on all aspects of production of a telenovela and even content in other forms of communication. We explored the case of Venezuela, where producers were forced to look over every aspect of the telenovela with a microscope or face consequences such being shut down by the government or even exiled from the country. In this situation, telenovelas ceased to be the reflection of society that they had come to be and instead had to be produced without many cultural aspects. I think it's especially important to learn about the extreme cases of regulation and censorship so we can identify potential censorship issues in our own country.

     In many of my classes at UGA, we've learned about various laws surrounding television and media content. However, each time we learned about these laws it was easy to see why they had been put into place. The main reason for the majority of them was to protect the consumer from false or misleading content. For example, the FTC thought that consumers were having difficulty distinguishing between paid content and the actual thoughts of social media influencers, so they mandated that every post have a hashtag that clearly demonstrated the post was an advertisement. On our television, graphic or untrue content typically has a warning before the episode. In these cases, we can clearly see that the essence of this media content was not significantly altered to change the overall message. The producers were still able to create graphic content without fear that the government would shut down their network. But we must ask ourselves where the line is between protecting consumers and censoring content. When does a law significantly change the message of the content? I think that this is very much a grey area and that it's difficult to determine censorship until it's in an extreme form.

     In our country, many television networks are utilizing their content to take stances against political and social issues. They accomplish this through a variety of ways, such as creating a character that reminds viewers of a certain political figure or they might even have a character say something right out. For example, the reboot of Charmed mentions that the apocalypse was brought out by our current president and his tweets. As viewers, we all know that this is a nod to Donald Trump. The same thing is happening with various telenovelas as well. In class, we discussed Al Otro Lado de Muro and how it deals with themes such as immigration in the United States. Throughout the episodes, various references are made to Trump and his attitude towards immigrants. In my opinion, its healthy for a society to explore certain real-world issues in their content. It provides a space for discourse about issues and an area for viewers to escape from reality. I think that the censorship of these ideas could be detrimental to society. It could inhibit the acceptance of new ideas or lifestyles.

     When we learn of new laws regulating media content, we should take a moment to consider the reason behind the passing of this law. Was it passed to protect the consumer, or was it passed to further a governmental agenda to limit the expression of ideas?

Producing and Consuming a Political Storyline

During my group’s consumption presentation last week, we talked how the political storyline in Al Otro Lado del Muro was consumed by the audience and what the producers had in mind when it came to the storyline. I have to admit when we were doing the research, I was shocked to see Telemundo’s president who stated that this show wasn’t meant to push a political viewpoint over another. As Dr. A mentioned, Telemundo has been walking a tricky line with Hispanics in the United States ever since the 2016 presidential election. In 2016, Trump kicked out beloved Univision Jorge Ramos. Univision took a strong stance to defend their reporter announcing it would no longer show the Miss America and Miss Universe beauty pageants Mr. Trump was in charge of, among other things. Telemundo obviously saw this as an opportunity and have been broadcasting Mr. Trump’s pageants ever since. This puts Telemundo in a tough situation of not wanting to be seen as sympathetic to the Trump administration (for obvious reasons) while also trying to remain in President Trump’s good graces.  

As I’ve been watching Al Otro Lado del Muro, I definitely felt that it was pushing a more liberal perspective on immigrants in the United States. For example, in one episode, Alejandra is at the Mexican embassy giving a speech about migrant mothers and mentions that “some people say that we don’t send our best...however, these women are the very best, the best people” This is a clear dig at Trump from when he was on the campaign trail and even though he is not mentioned, the audience is able to know and understand who Alejandra is talking about.

Additionally, throughout the telenovela, characters oftern express their negative attitudes towards the immigration policies that the United States has. Carmen, Eliza’s mom, in particular makes no secret of her distaste for the United States, the wall, the immigration policies, among other things. During the first half of the telenovela, in particular, there would be short clips of “news” stories running in the background that would serve to create a context for the upcoming scenes. In one the reporter talked about protestors calling for comprehensive immigration reform while in another, they talked about the current administration’s policy of separating families. Although these clips are simply meant to set up the context for events such as Sofia crossing the border illegally or Cumming’s new child trafficking ring that preys on the daughters of undocumented immigrants, it makes me wonder if the writers are speaking through the characters they have created to push a certain perspective?

I think that in a way they are. Although Telemundo is profiting by broadcasting Trump’s pageants, at the heart of their company they are a Spanish-speaking network that serves a large Hispanic population within the United States. Whether intentional or coincidental, I think that the writers of Telemundo were trying to remind the audience that they stand with the immigrant community, with the undocumented community, with the Hispanic community. Even though they probably couldn’t say outright that the show was meant to show people the difficulties that immigrants (of all types) face in the United States, they definitely showed the difficulties and were able to create a more empathetic lens through which to view the topic of immigration.

What about you? Do you think the writers of Telemundo were making a political statement with Al Otro Lado del Muro? Or of the president of Telemundo is right -- there is actually no political preference within the telenovela and anything the audience finds within the story is more of the audience projecting rather than planned?