Another Telefutura Shakeup, and Univision’s Continued Slighting of Venezuelan Novelas

So much for Telefutura’s first-ever all-novela primetime lineup. During the Univision/Telefutura Fall 2011 upfronts in mid-May, Telefutura announced such ambitious plans to try to knock off Telemundo’s novela lineup, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Yet for the second time in the last six or seven weeks, Telefutura has shaken up its lineup in a big way.  Here is a summary:

Veredicto Final…CANCELLED

Somos Tú Y Yo…Moved to Saturdays at 11AM

Alborada (repeat)…Moved from 10PM to 1PM

La Viuda Joven…Moved from 9PM to 5PM

Cine de las Estrellas returns!

First of all, the rerun of Televisa’s Alborada should never have been given the 10PM timeslot and Telefutura, perhaps realizing its mistake, has moved it to 1PM, effective this Monday (June 13).  Then there’s the matter of Telefutura giving up on its all-novela primetime lineup after just two weeks.  How short-sighted can Telefutura be?  Besides, Telefutura pre-empted, or aired at other than their regular times, several of those novelas to bring us soccer.  How does Telefutura expect to build an audience for its novelas that way?

Most disturbing, however, is the fate of the Venezuelan novelas La Viuda Joven and how it demonstrates the shabby treatment of Venezuelan novelas by Telefutura’s parent network Univision over the last nearly 20 years. When Venevision’s La Viuda Joven premiered less than two weeks ago, we finally had, for the first time in 18 years, a true Venezuelan telenovela airing in the “horario estelar” on an Univision-owned network.  It seemed like the dawning of a new day in which Univision would give a Venezuelan “localista” novela a fair chance to compete in primetime.

But only two weeks?  I mean, come on, Telefutura!  In the summer of 1993, Univision aired Venevision’sRosangelica for two months in primetime before moving it to 11AM. Even the ill-fated Marte Television novela La Loba Herida, another Venezuelan production, had eighteen primetime airings over five weeks before it was cancelled.  Yet Telefutura can’t (or won’t) give La Viuda Joven and Somos Tu Y Yo more than two weeks? 

“But if the ratings were terrible,” you may say, “then Telefutura had every right to cancel or move the shows.” That’s true, but Univision kept the low-rated Televisa novela Un Gancho al Corazon on its primetime schedule for over six months before finally moving it to 3PM.

Some eighteen years after Rosangelica and La Loba Herida, it seems Univision and its sister/daughter networks still refuse to air Venezuelan telenovelas in primetime, at least not for any real length of time.  And it’s somewhat telling that in the eighteen years between Rosangelica and La Viuda Joven, the only Venevision novelas to spend even part of their Univision runs in primetime (Gata Salvaje, Rebecca and Eva Luna) were shot on American soil instead of in and around Caracas, Venezuela.  Furthermore, when RCTV’s novelas were on Telefutura, they never once were given primetime slots. Yet several novelas from Colombia’s RCN have aired on Telefutura’s primetime schedule, as well as a Brazilian novella, and those novelas usually stayed in the primetime lineup from beginning to end.  Why is there such corporate hostility towards Venezuelan novellas at Univision?

As far as I know, Venevision’s Program Licensing Agreement with Univision is still scheduled to end in December 2017.  When that time comes, I think Venevision should sell its share in Univision and start selling its programming to other Spanish language networks, because as long as Televisa stays on Univsion, Venevision’s novelas will never get a fair shake.