No more English-language telenovellas
May 30, 2007Well the great experiment has gone bust–MyNetwork TV has killed their telenovella format in favor of cheaper reality shows and sports programming. The telenovellas were basically prime-time soap operas. The distinction with a telenovella is that it airs only for a fixed run, usually a couple months or so, rather than over multiple seasons. And it runs in a strip format, multiple episodes each week just like a daytime soap opera.
The reason they have a Spanish name like “telenovella” is because they’re apparently hugely popular (and profitable) on many Spanish-language stations. Nobody does them on English-language stations at least here in the US, which is why the fledgling MyNetwork TV group decided to give it a whirl. No competition for them in this new format.
Now I’ll admit I used to love the prime-time soaps. Dynasty in particular, but also Dallas. So I did sample a couple of the telenovellas, which were uniformly awful. I mean if you’re going to go for camp, go with gusto. That’s what Dynasty did so well–the cat-fights, the women’s gowns with huge shoulder pads, the people who go by multiple last names (Alexis Carrington Colby, etc). The telenovellas on MyNetwork TV were timid camp, they tried to be serious dramas built around campy premises. That just ends up being lame, it’s neither real serious drama nor real campy fun.
So now it has failed and they will be changing their format completely. Will that work? It just doesn’t seem focused enough, at least the telenovella approach was clear-cut and had direction. This new lineup is just about airing stuff that’s cheap to produce–reality shows and sports events. You can be that nebulous if you’re a major broadcast network, but this group is really sorta like a niche cable network. They need to have the same audience focus that a niche network has (think Spike or Lifetime or Animal Planet). I think this less-focused approach to programming is going to fail as well.