Alan Sokol
The efforts of Lucía Ballas-Traynor, executive Advertising Sales VP at Hemisphere Media Group has been key for important US firms to join as sponsors of Cinelatino.
“Sales are doing fine. Lucía has done an excellent job of convincing agencies and clients to try Cinelatino with magnificent. We have clients such as Johnson&Johnson, Sprint, Honda, GoDaddy and many more. It´s not easy to close deals with these clients the first time, and in a difficult environment, but Lucía has been very successful,” highlighted Alan Sokol, president, and CEO of the group.
He commented that the Upfront process of the portfolio´s channels will be made through visits to the agencies in a period of three months that will start soon. He recalled that in the US they are a major in channels in Spanish (Cinelatino, Pasiones, WAPA América, TV Dominicana and Centroamérica TV).
Sokol also made a special mention of Canal 1, where the group has 40% of participation. “Colombia is a very singular market, since with 50 million people, it only as two national open TV channels. It is a hard challenge, but we trust in our ability to have an important market share and a company that earns money.” He said that will only six months, they have a 6% audience share. “Guerreros, that is a version of Esto Es Guerra, from Peru, does very well with a 15% share”.
Regarding PantaYA he expressed that it is one of the most popular apps in Apple and in Android that is in the top 15 of entertainment. “We want to make an entertainment platform, not only for films but general entertainment, with series, documentaries and another type of programming.”
Regarding Pasiones, he said it is a different proposal, “it is a channel with the best novelas in the world, regardless of where they are produced, only in terms of their quality. We now have three novelas from Turkey and they work very well. For the first time, we have a novela from India dubbed into Spanish that Works excellently,” he said.
