Beyond Novelas

Mar 05, 12:52 PM

Current Headlines: By Casey Woods, The Miami Herald

Mar. 5--Anna Silvetti -- telenovela star, Spanish immigrant, yogi -- takes a deep breath and sends her two "students" into the rhythmic flow of Sun Salutations.

"Inhalamos, extendemos los brazos," she says, exhorting you to breathe and stretch through yoga poses, in Spanish.

Set amid the lush greenery of North Miami Beach's Spanish Monastery, Aire Yoga, or Air Yoga hits the airwaves this week. It's part of the national launch of V-Me, a Spanish-language television network that will offer the country's Hispanic population 24-hour public television-style programming focused on children's, educational, and lifestyle shows.

The network's backers are betting the moment is ripe to expand the country's Spanish-language television beyond the telenovelas, or soap operas, and variety shows that have come to define it.

"The [Hispanic] community wants to be proud when [they] look at the TV, they want to be proud of the images that look back at them, and they want to be challenged by what they see," said Mario Baeza, whose company is the lead investor in the for-profit network.

After V-Me's launch this afternoon, Spanish speakers will be able to start their day with the one-hour morning yoga class set in locations across Miami, and end it with Viva Voz, a nightly interview show shot in New York that will tackle national issues that affect Latinos.

In between: children's fare such as Plaza Sesamo, or Sesame Street, and factual programs such as the Miami-produced Ciencia en the News Hour, or Science in the News Hour, with segments featured on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

The network is a public-private partnership between the nonprofit Educational Broadcasting Corporation -- parent company of WNET in New York, one of the Public Broadcasting Service's flagship channels -- and investors such as The Baeza Group and Syncom Funds.

V-Me, pronounced "veh-meh", which means "see me" in Spanish, will be distributed through digital spinoff channels of public television stations, including Miami's WPBT. Viewers must have a digital TV set or subscribe to digital cable to see the channel.

With 18 public channels signed up so far, including channels in Los Angeles, New York and Houston, V-Me will reach markets that represent 60 percent of the country's Hispanics.

The network estimates V-Me's initial reach at 28 million homes, but distribution will soon grow to 50 million, as the Federal Communications Commission's 2009 deadline nears for television broadcasters to fully switch to digital approaches.

The network's piggyback arrangement with public television channels allows it to break into broad national distribution, which has been among the most significant barriers to diversifying Spanish-language content, said V-Me's content director Guillermo Sierra.

"This is a vicious cycle, like the chicken and egg syndrome, [in which] there is not enough content, so there is not enough distribution, but then there is not enough distribution because there is not enough content," Sierra said.

Another limitation on the expansion of programming in Spanish has been the perception that Latinos are only interested in telenovelas and talk shows -- a stereotype Baeza called "insulting."

"It's all we have, yes, because in probably 60 percent of Hispanic households all they can get is Univision, Telemundo or Telefutura," said Baeza, a Cuban American. "Most Hispanic households are left with few true Spanish-language possibilities."

Other industry insiders say the current Spanish-language programming is popular for good reason -- one that spells intense challenges for V-Me.

"The average immigrant comes here . . . and finds the same programming he found in his town in Mexico, the telenovela, and so he stays, but as soon as his children have more access to resources, they switch to English TV," said Luca Bentivoglio, a former Univision executive who until recently headed a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding Latino-focused programming. "If the more educated switch channels [to English] and the newly arrived stay with the old, I see it as very difficult to break the model because it's one that works."

Carlos Alcazar of the Hispanic Communications Network, a Washington, D.C., media company, believes that the success of political and news shows in Latin America bodes well for a U.S. Latino model.

"Generally speaking, here in the U.S., we don't have a Spanish-language equivalent of Meet the Press, but in every Latin American country there is not one but two or three or more programs of that nature, and they are programs with . . . high ratings," Alcazar said. "There's a clear disconnect here, because we're obviously not programming in the U.S. for that market."

An appetite for more serious programs is apparent in Miami, where local political shows such as America TeVe's A Mano Limpia, or loosely translated, "Fair Fight"; WSBS-TV's Polos Opuestos, or "Opposite Sides"; WGENTV's El Factor Brown, or "The Brown Factor"; and Oppenheimer Presenta on Mega-TV are popular on Spanish-language television.

Beyond political and informative shows, many Latinos lament the lack of quality children's programming in Spanish. Univision, the largest Spanish-language broadcaster in the United States, recently agreed to a record $24 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission for attempting to fulfill the federal education programming requirement with children's soap operas.

Responding to the diversity of the Hispanic population in Miami and nationwide will be a key challenge for the network, which plans to have time slots for affiliates to broadcast locally produced shows.

For Baeza -- who dreams of Nightline-style discussion programs that would bring together Latinos from across the country to discuss national issues -- there is an added benefit to creating broader appeal.

"We look at that diversity as an opportunity . . . because we start from the premise that there is an identity actually forming in the country today, a new American-Latino culture that is different from the cultures of the individual Latin countries," he said. "These things can't be forced, but we can be part of the evolution process."

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