Telenovas heat up disc biz
Sales of Latino sudsers driving booming market
Sales of Latino sudsers like "Rubi," "Amor real" and "La madrastra" are helping drive the booming Spanish-language disc market, now estimated between $170 million and $250 million. According to Nielsen VideoScan, Spanish-language DVD sales virtually doubled last year, growing a whopping 98% during the same period that general homevid spending declined for the first time since its introduction more than 25 years earlier.
Vivendi Visual Entertainment, which releases DVDs from Televisa's U.S. homevid distrib Xenon Pictures, sold 150,000 units of "Amor real." It has even higher hopes for the December disc bow of teen telenovela "Rebelde," a sudser that has spawned hit music group RBD, a pop phenom not unlike the Monkees. The label projects DVD sales in the 500,000 range.
Buena Park, Calif.-based indie homevid distrib Vanguard Cinema was so inspired by growing sales it decided to bankroll its first direct-to-DVD telenovelas. "Celos" (Jealousy) and "La victima" (The Victim) will hit shelves this fall. Toplined by Latino actors with Anglos in supporting roles, the vids are shot in L.A. on shoestring budgets under $100,000.
"We've incorporated the immigrant experience into our storylines," Vanguard head of acquisitions Manny Saldivar says.
DVD releases of telenovelas are taking on the violent action titles that sold gangbusters in the '80s and '90s. In their heyday, narcos, a genre with drug trafficking themes, used to make up 70% to 80% of Vanguard's Latino DVD sales. But now they're down to 40%, Saldivar says.
Telenovelas are so popular among Latinos that Fox is launching an entire network devoted to them. MyNetwork is developing a series of telenovelas for the U.S. market.
More than 30 million people in the U.S., roughly 12% of the population, speak Spanish as a first or second language.
Studios are also vying with smaller labels for this aud. Mini-major Lionsgate, which hired Arturo Chavez to head its Spanish-language programming unit in May, recently shipped 115,000 copies of its Spanish-language theatrical "La mujer de mi hermano," which toplines telenovela star Barbara Mori.
But homevid execs caution the Latin market differs from the general DVD market in key ways. According to Vivendi Visual marketing and operations veep Soumya Sriraman, sales build up gradually on consumer awareness.
There's certainly more titles to choose from Stateside. According to the DVD Release Report, the number of Spanish-language titles on DVD jumped by 80% in 2005 to more than 650 titles.
Sriraman points out that Spanish-language sections in stores are still relatively new, noting, "Four years ago, there was a dearth of Spanish-language product."
