Latin American pay-TV audiences are changing and stations are now taking action. It is yet to be known what is in store for the advertising pie and cable operators once this transformation is over.

Pay TV in Latin America—and, why not, in the rest of the world—survives today thanks to those special services offered through premium packages. What used to please a broad range of subscribers stopped being profitable on the very same day users demanded technological improvements in the offer. Thus, HD, VOD, DVR and others emerged as added-value services for those subscribers with a higher purchasing power and better able to pay the cost for those technological investments made by the stations themselves and operators.

And it’s a fact that pay TV has always been aimed at the ABC1 target, upper-class households able to pay for an entertainment offer beyond that which national air TV could offer. But everything changes. The prosperity enjoyed by the region made it possible for upper-middle and lower-middle classes to access a higher purchasing power and, thus, start consuming pay TV. And it’s precisely this fact what is changing the offer spectrum on a regional level.

Argentina’s La Nación newspaper published an interesting article on Sunday, June 19 where this phenomenon is precisely observed from one of its consequences —the disappearance of subtitles in that country’s cable TV basic packages. Journalist Marcelo Stiletano argues in that report that an economic rise in the local C-classes has resulted in a higher demand for Spanish-dubbed contents against subtitled ones.

Yet it is the stations themselves that have decided to offer dubbed content within their basic—and cheaper—packages, making subtitles a premium benefit for more affluent clients. Thus, what at the beginning of the cable era was one of its greatest benefits—subtitles instead of the frequently used air-TV dubbing—is now disappearing in the ocean of additional services offered by premium packages.  

TV stations argue that this is a way to regain their leadership in the face of an ABC1 audience migrating to premium packages, tempted by services such as HD and VOD. And what about those cable operators that are passively changing their packages? They are precisely the ones that will benefit the most by this change, as they could see an income raise by offering an additional service in more expensive packages. But “taking out” benefits from basic packages could be a serious mistake —nobody wants to start paying for something that used to be free.

The new Latin American cable audience is still in its infancy and developing in the face of the economic growth of its most characteristic classes. However, these upcoming times will be crucial to begin to understand their new habits, customs and preferences. Searching for more dubbed content is surely just an experimental first step which will probably modify Latin American pay-TV viewers’ DNA, causing on its way a revolution in the advertising pie and cable operators. This is undoubtedly the right time to be alert to these changes.