Speaking Their Language

The most-watched broadcast in U.S. television history — Super Bowl XLIX, back in 2015 — logged more than 114 million viewers. So it's hard to wrap your head around the idea of 500 million viewers. But that is the potential audience for ViX, the new streaming platform from TelevisaUnivision, the behemoth formed by the merger of Grupo Televisa, the largest media company in Mexico, and Univision, the largest provider of Spanish-language television in the United States.

More precisely, says Pierluigi Gazzolo — TelevisaUnivision's president and chief transformation officer — 580 million people in the world speak Spanish, making it the second-most widely spoken language after Mandarin. Yet this enormous market has been underserved, because there has been no global streaming platform exclusively dedicated to it.

That is, not until ViX, the free, advertising-based video-on-demand (AVOD) product from TelevisaUnivision that launched March 31. A premium subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) tier, ViX+, is expected later this year. Both will eventually feature live and on-demand channels, all available on the major platforms, including iOS, Android, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku and Samsung TV+.

What's more, TelevisaUnivision says it will invest billions in original content, with a target of producing 1,000 hours of exclusive programming this year.

"The goal for us," Gazzolo says, "is to become an indispensable service for the Spanish-language speakers around the world."

To that end, ViX premiered with 40,000 hours of TV series, movies, news, sports and more — including original programming from renowned Spanish-language media figures such as journalist Jorge Ramos and producer-performer Eugenio Derbez.

ViX+ will provide an additional 10,000-plus hours of content, including movies and series from some of the best-known creators in Spanish-language media. Both ViX and ViX+ will offer top-tier soccer games from leagues throughout North, Central and South America, and many other sports options. In early May, TelevisaUnivision expanded its content offerings even further with the acquisition of the Spanish-language streaming platform Pantaya, from Hemisphere Media Group.

As for Gazzolo, he grew up in Italy, El Salvador and Florida —"I'm a citizen of the world that feels more Latino," he quips — and spent more than twenty-five years as an executive at ViacomCBS, where he ran cable divisions and was part of the teams that launched the streaming platforms Pluto TV and Paramount+. In 2021, he joined Univision CEO Wade Davis, a former ViacomCBS colleague, to launch Prende TV, a pre-merger streamer that served as a pilot of sorts for ViX.

In a recent interview, Gazzolo spoke with emmy's Juan Morales about the origins of ViX and the vision and strategy for both versions of the service. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

The Televisa-Univision merger was announced in April 2021. It became official in January of this year, and ViX was announced just a month later. To what extent did the potential of the ViX/ViX+ streaming platform drive the merger of the two large media companies?
Streaming was the biggest driver, but it was not the only driver. The reason I say that, and this is very important, is because we are one of the few television networks where our core business — our network business — continues to grow.

So, we do not see streaming as a replacement because we're losing ratings. In fact, our ratings are growing. The Spanish-language audience that we have is consuming more linear content than ever. We're seeing this as an expansion above and beyond the success that we already have in television and expanding it with a completely different proposition.

How did ViX/ViX+ evolve from the existing streaming video brands, Televisa's Blim and Univision's Prende TV?
We had Prende TV in the U.S. and Blim in Mexico. Prende TV was something that Wade Davis, our CEO, and I launched at Univision. You can think of Prende TV as a pilot to understand whether the idea of launching a global streaming [platform] in Spanish was a good idea.

In fact, it turned out to be an excellent idea, because it became the number-one Spanish-language entertainment app in the U.S. very quickly — within six months of launch. That app was the basis of what now has become ViX. We learned a lot of great stuff from it.

There are already many streaming platforms, with more on the way. What will allow ViX/ViX+ to succeed in this crowded space?
The reason there's such a huge opportunity for us, and one of the biggest drivers of the merger, is because all of us — including Wade and myself — have been saying for a while that there are 580 million people in the world who speak Spanish. That's the second-largest spoken language after Mandarin.

And yet, there is not one global streaming platform that is exclusively and authentically dedicated to this audience. None. That's why we're calling this the last meaningful open lane of streaming. If you were to take the top platforms, combine the biggest and run the math of how much content they offer originally produced in Spanish — authentically and originally produced Spanish-language [programming]; I don't mean dubbed, but original Spanish-language — it is a fraction of the audience.

Some established streaming platforms have made a commitment to international programming, including a lot of Spanish-language content.
When you hear all these announcements about so-and-so investing in Spanish-language [content], all that adds up to a fraction of the audience. Our unique proposition for ViX and ViX+ is that we will only focus on those 580 million. And we can do it because with the merger with Televisa, we now have access to the largest Spanish-language library of hits that we can use both for the free experience and paid experience.

How does Univision's experience with the Spanish-speaking audience create an advantage for ViX/ViX+?
We will have access to the largest production machine of Spanish-language [content] — we [already] produce a significant amount of hours a year — that we didn't have access to before. We have the expertise and the know-how of how our audience thinks and behaves.

Remember, not all Spanish speakers are [the same]. Argentines and Mexicans have nothing to do with each other in many cultural ways. Colombia is very different from Mexico. Mexicans on the West Coast are very different from Puerto Ricans on the East Coast. We know how to target; we have that skillset in place.

And finally, we have the reach. In that 580 million universe, the two biggest markets are U.S. Hispanic, because of [America's] GDP, and Mexico because of its population. And in those two markets, our networks reach 100 million people a day, [looking at] the entire footprint.

So, we have the ability now to tap that meaningful open lane. That's why our promise continues to be that we will not be a minority. We will not offer a minority [of our content] for you, Spanish speaker. Everything we're going to do, Spanish speaker, is for you. And we know you authentically.

How will you reflect the differences among the Spanish-speaking cultures in your programming?
We're trying to be authentic. For instance, we're going to do a YA show about five kids, Pinches Momias, in partnership with Propagate Fuego [the Spanish-language arm of L.A.–based studio Propagate]. If you want to call something the most Mexican Stranger Things you could ever do — we're going to do it.

It's set in Guanajuato, which is a very highly cultured city in Mexico, where there are mummies. You can Google the Guanajuato mummies — they're in a museum. In the show, the mummies wake up and these kids — who are all local, with the local Guanajuato accent — are trying to save the town from the mummies. So, it's not just a broad Mexican series. It's a Mexican series about kids in Guanajuato, with the culture of Guanajuato.

That's what we mean when we say we're going to be authentic. We will [rarely] have a show where, in the immediate family, the father is a Venezuelan actor, and the son is a Colombian actor. We want to keep it as authentic as possible. That's going to be our rule of thumb. And so far, everything we've announced goes with that.

In addition to the U.S. and Mexico, are you also in Central and South America?
Everywhere in the Americas that Spanish is spoken — among the U.S. Hispanic population, in Mexico, Spanish-speaking Latin America. [For now, Cuba is not included.] Eventually, we're looking to expand to Spain, but for now, it's the Spanish-speaking Americas.

Other platforms cite their foreign-language content — not just Spanish, but many languages — to drive viewership and subscriptions. But it sounds like your content plans dwarf their Spanish-language inventory.
Well, I'm not trying to say that we dwarf them. I am trying to say that Spanish-language will be our core business. It's not a second thought. It's not a box that I have to check. It's the only way we're going to do this.

The interesting part is that we are attracting an incredible amount of talent that wouldn't have come in if they didn't believe that they're going to be prioritized in our world. We have people who were working with Amazon Prime. We have Spanish-language authors and creators who were working with Netflix. They're all coming to us because they know that this will be their home where we will let them flourish and we will prioritize them. Spanish-language will be our livelihood here.

And just one more thought... on ViX+, which we will be launching in the second half of the year, there will be more than fifty original regional titles. So, again, we're not just a television company trying to make up ratings from streaming. It's the reverse. We are creating an incremental service with a very large investment because we will bet on the Spanish-language audience. Creators see this and understand it, and they are accompanying us through the venture.

You have announced partnerships with many well-known creators, performers and writers, including Eugenio Derbez, Salma Hayek Pinault, Selena Gomez, Maria Dueñas, Mario Vargas Llosa and Santiago Limón. How will the relationships with those artists work?
They will be a big part of the [programming] source. There are many others that we're announcing. [Peruvian author] Mario Vargas Llosa is a Nobel Prize winner. He knows Latin American culture better than anyone else in the world, including its diverse outlook. We're going to take one of his biggest novels, Travesuras de la niña mala [The Bad Girl], and turn it into a series. This novel touches various parts of [Latin America], but it also touches on how a Latin American behaves when she goes to Europe. So, it's all about the evolution of this character from Latin America to Europe.

Then you've got Salma Hayek, who, as you know, is very proud of her Mexican heritage. She's going to bring us amazing movies in the first-look deal we have with her. We also have María Dueñas. She's a best-selling Spanish novelist who was responsible for many streaming hits, including El tiempo entre costuras [The Time in Between] on Netflix.

And then comes Eugenio Derbez. Humor is the hardest thing to translate. But he has managed somehow to make Spanish-language humor universal. He has managed to find that formula, and he does it well from a humorous point of view and from a family-based genre point of view. I would categorize Eugenio as the most known television and movie name for Spanish speakers around the world. And he agreed to do a first-look deal with us versus another established global streamer — he had many options — because he believes that we will prioritize [this audience].

In addition to his decades of Spanish-language movies and television, Derbez works in the U.S. He was in CODA, which won the Oscar for best picture, and he has a series on Apple TV+, Acapulco. What makes him such a creative force?
He's a visionary. He does everything: in front of the camera, behind the camera. And he's an entrepreneur.

ViX, our AVOD product, is going to be the exclusive [home] for a series that was born on Televisa called La familia P. Luche [The P.Lush Family]. As a franchise, I think it is still one of the most syndicated Spanish-language comedy series in the world. It's like Friends — that level of syndication for us Latinos. And he was the creator of the show and the main actor. Then he jumped into movies, and he did the most-streamed reality series for Amazon, De viaje con los Derbez [Traveling with the Derbezes].

He's been everywhere, and he's an entrepreneur. But most importantly, he understands that what we're doing is a unique opportunity that only we can grab right now. By the way, although most of his collaborations are going to be for our ViX+ premium SVOD platform, he's also going to be curating a channel for our AVOD platform, ViX.

What has the response been to ViX since its launch?
I don't want to give numbers, but it's been much higher than what we expected. And we've only launched the free experience. We haven't yet launched the premium experience. But it's been above and beyond our expectations. We're very, very happy.

You've been a television executive for a long time. What are your thoughts about where we are now, and where do you see things going? Earlier this year Nielsen reported that people are overwhelmed by the amount of available content, yet they would still be interested in more streaming platforms. That sounds like a contradiction.
It feels a little bit like a mystery, this evolution that we're looking at. Twenty years ago, when I was managing MTV in Latin America, I never thought we would ever get to a point where there would be much more content out there and enough people to consume it. But look at what's happening right now.

The way we have evolved has been quick and drastic. But I do believe, particularly in the Spanish-language arena, [there is a lot of live viewing]. If you look at Univision, about 90 percent of the audience is live viewing versus C3 and C7 [via DVR three and seven days after initial airdate]. So instead of doing catch-up viewing, they do more live.

With the Anglo networks, it's about 70 percent-plus. In general, there's no question that there's going to be live consumption. But the brands you and I call our favorite channels already have their VOD versions. So, we are evolving to a world of VOD.

What has been interesting to me, and why I call this a mystery, is that we always think certain things are going to happen, and then they change. When we launched Pluto, and then Prende and now with ViX, the channel experience is not an on-demand experience. And if you look at the numbers, a figure that I can give you, about half of the viewership happens in the live channels, albeit it being digital.

So, it's hard to tell what people really want. But at the end of the day, it's about getting your content whenever you want, on any device — sometimes being passive, as has been my experience with ViX, where people want to sit back and watch channels on a [connected television] or Roku device, or being active, when they want to search for their favorite VOD show.

It's just a matter of giving them the space and the ability to do it however they want. That's where we are today. Today is the future in that way.

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine issue #6, 2022, under the title, "Speaking Their Language."