Talent meets public

THE AWARD-WINNING CARACOL TV AND CARACOL RADIO ARE NUMBER ONE IN THEIR FIELD AND HAVE SIGNED NUMEROUS AGREEMENTS WITH INTERNATIONAL NEWS AND MEDIA GROUPS

RICARDO ALARCON GAVIRIA President of Caracol TV

Just one year after going on the air with its first broadcast in July 1998, Colombia’s Caracol TV had already become the nation’s number one rated channel, capturing 29% of the entire audience in July 1999 and 34.4% by September. Two months later, Caracol TV received Spain’s prestigious Ondas Award as the best television station in Latin America and “for having become a unique experience in the American continent”.
“Caracol TV had to get on its feet in a really short time, for both legal and competitive reasons,” recalls Caracol TV president Ricardo Alarcon Gaviria. “This forced us to quickly find a big dose of high national and international talent. We already had national experience and we were able to count on consultants from other countries. Perhaps the closest relationship was with the Spanish group Arbol, although we also had Canadians helping with the technical issues and for the news programs we had U.S. assistance. It was a short, but very intense period. Today, however, we hardly work at all with any of these companies, and 100% of our programs is handled by the channel’s own teams.”

VIEWERS can follow the romantic adventures of their heroes as well as news, chats and commercial offers “live” on the Caracol website.

The company has moved quickly to form international alliances with such firms as the powerful Cisneros Group, which owns a minority stake in Caracol TV, and is moving into the U.S. market with strategic alliance agreements and perhaps in the future by entering directly into the open-air channels to serve the Hispanic community.
“We have a five-year agreement with Telemundo to co-produce soap operas and are working on a cooperation agreement concerning news broadcasts,” says Mr. Alarcon. “Telemundo is relatively new in the United States and so we can identify with them. With CNN we have some specific agreements to offer news about Colombia and they have a small office in our newsroom. It’s a very concrete agreement, but could expand at any moment.
“We also closed an important agreement with Disney’s Buena Vista that’s the first of its kind for Latin America.

They are going to co-produce one of our soaps, and about two months ago they included two of our soap operas in their international sales package, right along with their top full-length film productions,” says Mr. Alarcon.
Although Caracol TV is a new company, the Caracol brand name has a long tradition in Colombia. Caracol Radio was founded in 1948 in Medellin and later expanded operations to Bogota and Cali. Some 38 years later the Bavaria Group entered the company as a shareholder and gave Caracol the professional focus and business orientation that has led to its stellar success today.

JOSE MANUEL RESTREPO President of Caracol Radio

In 1999 Caracol Radio signed an agreement with the Spanish media giant Grupo Prisa to form a joint venture in the United States called Grupo Latino de Radio- difusion that broadcasts out of Miami, adding to Caracol’s presence in France, Chile, Panama and Costa Rica with 107 radio stations in all. “Radio Latina in Paris, for example, is not only geared towards the Spanish-speaking market. The French speakers are big fans of tropical music. Every year there’s a huge party in Paris where some 5,000 people gather to listen to and dance to salsa, merengue and vallenato,” explains Jose Manuel Restrepo, president of Caracol Radio.
The company’s long-term strategy includes expanding into the New York and Los Angeles markets to tap into the huge Hispanic communities there, Mr. Restrepo says. “The Spanish Group Prisa,” he notes, “decided to set up their main offices in Miami because the idea is to develop our participation in the Hispanic market throughout the United States.”