Alejandro Llado Medcom
The Calle 7 format has allowed Medcom to experiment and move towards its digital transformation. From being a successful program with 16 seasons on the air, it paused due to the pandemic and returned to the screens this year at the request of the audiences and with broad support from clients in the channel’s upfront. And now has become a pioneer of the region with the creation of a metaverse.
This contest show, with which Medcom conquered the afternoon schedule from Monday to Friday and makes the Panamanian audiences feel as if they were watching a football classic where they support their teams, has been the lever to enter new platforms. They were the first to make live broadcasts, they took the content to their streaming service Medcom Go, to Twitch and YouTube, where they have accomplished 25 thousand people connected a day. “For our return, we wanted to create something totally innovative. In Panama and in the region there was no metaverse and the platform most aligned to what we wanted was Roblox with very good numbers and an audience,” said Alejandro Lladó, deputy director of Medcom Digital.
This is how a Calle 7 virtual world was created, in which they recreated in the metaverse the same set seen on the Telemetro channel. Right now they have 17 thousand gamers, more than 500 connected daily. “Customers are excited.” Cochez, Tigo, Super 99, and Novey are advertisers who migrated also to the metaverse, while Coca-Cola is advertising only digitally through the metaverse. “For us, it is more than a promise kept. We created the first metaverse in the region and we are pioneers,” added Lladó, who assures that brands believe in this type of bet because it delivers results and the format works, for this reason, he insists, “you have to dare.”
For Medcom Digital this experience can be replicated in other content developed by this division or by the television network. For instance, with the show business show La Mordida, they’re beginning to shape the possibility of creating a metaverse in which audiences can attend concerts.
COMPETITION DNA
Calle 7 is an original format of Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN) that has been successfully adapted in other countries in the region. In Telemetro Panama they took the Ecuadorian version as a reference to build this “contest program in which organic reality is generated,” as described by Luciano Ciampoli, who was the executive producer of the show in its early years and is today’s Production Manager at Medcom and is responsible for its return to the screens.
“The competition is real” is the slogan and DNA of the format in which a red team and a yellow team face each other. In four-month seasons, 20 contestants come together to engage in physical duels of precision, speed, stamina, and mental toughness. “They are people in good condition, but it is not the physical profile that ends up defining the casting; but if the person is going to be interesting for the audience because what we do is entertainment.”
In the end, two wins per category, male or female, coming back the next season in which 50% of the casting is renewed. “The program triggers content on all platforms because we do surveys, people give their opinion on who stays, who should return or leave.” It also has the power to move audiences from Roblox to traditional TV by giving them the opportunity to earn points in the metaverse from what happens on the show. In addition, other derivative versions of the same format have been created for teenagers or celebrities.
