Wildly Popular Telenovelas Serials Coming to English-Language TV

In its latest attempt to lure Latino viewers, Hollywood is getting melodramatic

LOS ANGELES (By Sandra Barrera, Daily News) February 15, 2007 — Yes, that steamy serial found on Telemundo and Univision is now on the fast track to English-language prime time. At least two telenovelas — a definite story arc that ends like a novel after only a few months — will debut this summer from CBS and Twentieth Television. The new franchise from Twentieth, "Desire," is expected to air five nights a week, with an hourlong weekend summary, for 13 weeks at a time on UPN starting in June. The network is owned by CBS and will merge with The WB next fall.

NBC and ABC are also exploring the genre, which Robert Thompson, founding director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television, says "could be an exciting new idea for English-language television ... to give it some buzz, some voltage."

Maybe even Latino viewers?

Bob Cook, president and chief operating officer of Twentieth Television, certainly hopes so.

"We're probably targeting the second- and third-generation Hispanic communities because those are predominantly English-speaking, and this is going to be an English-speaking show, so I think they'll find that attractive," Cook says.

Twentieth Television has plans to produce and distribute at least three telenovelas a year under the "Desire" banner. Pilots have already been shot for "Fashion House" from Miami and "Table for Three" from Colombia, and production is expected to begin soon. "Fashion House" is based on the popular Latin American telenovela "Salir de Noche," which revolves around the cutthroat world of high fashion, where greed, lust and blind ambition can make or break careers. And hearts.

In "Table for Three," a family is torn apart when two brothers on the run from the Mafia fall for the same woman. "It's got murder, betrayal, sex and intrigue ... and it's just Americanized enough," Cook says, adding that the story starts in New Jersey and ends in Los Angeles.

Telenovelas are hugely popular worldwide, and not just in places where Spanish is spoken. They are watched by some 2 billion people in more than 100 countries, from Europe to Asia to the Middle East, and dubbed in more than 50 languages, dialects and accents.

"The anecdotes of success are abundant worldwide, telling us stories of how Mexican, Brazilian or Colombian telenovelas have emptied streets in Lebanon, forced the Russian parliament to cut debates short and have kept millions of European and Asians fixed to their TV screens," says Thomas Tufte, author of "Living With the Rubbish Queen: Telenovelas, Culture and Modernity in Brazil."

But in Latin America, the telenovela is more than just entertainment. It has deep cultural and social roots not easily translatable elsewhere.

"It's a dream story of upward mobility, which resonates strongly with the social reality of inequality in Latin America," Tufte says, adding that for the disenfranchised, it "becomes the fuel of hope, social aspiration and a better life."

That isn't likely to be the case with the Anglo versions on English-language television, where it always comes down to ratings and cost.

"There is a challenge with coming up with something that you know is going to be over and doing it in an economically feasible way, which will still attract an audience that has grown to have particularly high standards when it comes to production values in prime time," says Barbara Bloom, senior vice president of CBS Daytime.

The telenovelas airing this summer won't be as melodramatic as their Spanish-language counterparts, Bloom says. But she adds that they will have a grand opening and finale with "lots of twists and turns along the way" with help from best-selling romance author Nicholas Sparks; Denise DiNovi, who produced the films "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," "Heathers" and "Edward Scissorhands"; and Jonathan Prince, producer of the NBC drama "American Dreams."

NBC Universal is working with sister company Telemundo to adapt one of its most popular telenovelas, called "El Cuerpo del Deseo," or "Body of Desire."

And Stephen McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment, says his network is still "in the exploratory phase" when it comes to the telenovela.

"There's no question that in the Hispanic marketplace, these are the mainstay," he says. "So we're really interested to see how you can translate that to a broadcast network like ours."

Twentieth Television, on the other hand, prides itself on staying true to form.

"There's techniques we're employing that we've learned from the international market that we don't want to talk about because we don't want our competition to be aware of, but it's really given us an opportunity to put a lot of value on the screen and do it in a cost-efficient way," Cook says.

For starters, the scripts are already in the bag. Twentieth Television has purchased several years worth of top-rated story arcs from different countries.

It's also recruited independent directors and producers, and unknown actors, most of them from the telenovela world.

"The feeling here is we're going to create stars not unlike 'The O.C.' did," Cook says, adding that telenovela talent could also help attract Latino viewers.

According to Alex Nogales, head of the L.A.-based National Hispanic Media Coalition, that's good news not just for viewers but for the talent because it focuses attention on the Latino community as a creative force.

"The world has changed, and there are a lot of roles that are ethnically blind," he says. "We're seeing the changes, and those changes are only going to accelerate in the next few years."

And although he's no fan of the telenovela, Nogales believes that "you've got to start somewhere."

That start could be "Desire" and the other telenovela experiments about to follow.

So stay tuned.