Word: telenovela
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Consider yourself warned. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are all developing English-language versions of the over-the-top Spanish-language soap operas known as telenovelas. Unlike American soaps, telenovelas air in prime time, with a cliffhanger at the conclusion of each hour-long episode, and end after a few months. The networks are hoping to find in the telenovela a new format, like reality TV, that will reclaim viewers who have soured on sitcoms, police procedurals and, well, reality TV. "The reality-TV genre is growing stale, and networks are looking for a new, low-cost format to fill...
...ambitious plans for American telenovelas, with a two-year deal to option all the novelas aired on its sister network Telemundo, which is also owned by parent company General Electric. "Our role is licensing formats to them, hand-holding, consulting," says Alfredo Richard, a spokesman for Telemundo. The stories are almost always some variation on star-crossed lovers united in the end. "It's a couple that is trying to have a kiss, and there's a writer in the middle that doesn't let them," says Patricio Wills, a longtime telenovela writer and now head of production for Telemundo...
...core, the telenovela is selling the same idea that made shows like The Bachelor so popular: "You really think that there is one soul mate for you," Galán says. "It's a universal desire." But the scripts need adjustment. "It's very commonplace for a protagonist of a novela to be a virgin until she gets married," she says. "In the U.S., it would seem ridiculous...
...Telenovelas will force networks and viewers to change their habits. A typical telenovela that runs daily for months could require more than 100 episodes, in contrast to two dozen weekly episodes for a season of a prime-time network drama. That has always been a sticking point with U.S. TV executives, who have been skeptical that American prime-time viewers would watch so many episodes of one show in a week. "It requires an enormous amount of dedication," says Michael Schwimmer, CEO of Sí-TV, a cable channel that caters to young Latinos...
Galán promises that NBC's telenovela will look and feel as polished as anything else in prime time, but telenovela producers will be spending only an estimated $100,000 to $500,000 an episode. They won't have to pay for superstar salaries (comedian Ray Romano took home $2 million an episode), expensive writers ("adapters" are paid as little as $50,000 a year) or elaborate shoots. Twentieth Television has plotted out the story arcs for both of its shows and will shoot them jointly to create more efficiency, Cook says. By just changing the lighting, for example, producers...