LISBON -- Prisa, Spain's biggest media company, is angling to push into international telenovela production with its epic "Equador" (Ecuador).
The 26-part skein is produced by its remodeled Plural Entertainment and its top-rating Portuguese TV channel TVI, which pumps primetime with inhouse soaps.
Shot in HD for E7.8 million ($10 million), and market preeming at the NATPE programming confab, which kicks off in Las Vegas on Jan. 26, "Equador" is Portugal's biggest TV production ever. It uses 5,000 extras, 118 actors and locations including Lisbon, Portugal; Petropolis, Brazil; Jodhpur, India; and Santo Tome y Principe in Africa's Gulf of Guinea.
A cut above an average telenovela, the story concerns a love triangle set against the backdrop of the Portuguese cocoa trade in the early 1900s. It bowed Dec. 21 to a 34.7% audience share on TVI; its fifth episode nabbed 44.5% on Jan.18
Given Prisa's ambitions, an international telenovela push looks inevitable.
In 2007 it took over Portugal's Media Capital, which owns Plural and TVI. Powered by its primetime domestic fiction, TVI's grown market share four years, bucking market fragmentation, to notch up profits of $39 million in 2007.
But TVI's 36% audience share in 2008 could be near as good as it gets. Early this year Prisa merged Plural with Media Capital's NBP, which already produces 1,000 hours of programming annually, largely for TVI.
Given Portugal's small size, growth means finding broader markets, says Plural manager Bernardo Bairrao. "We need to step up in ambitions."
With offices in Miami, Madrid, Lisbon and Buenos Aires, Plural hopes to pool know-how and business volume, competing in Latin America's big league, says Media Capital CEO Manuel Polanco.
Prisa already has a longheld publishing presence in Latin America and, more recently, radio. It needs to grow its entertainment contents, Polanco adds.
Expect a flotilla of fiction flagships hitting international waters from Portugal.
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