“The pay-TV business has changed. Interaction between programmers and operators is becoming more and more needed. Conditions are not met for one part to design new products without consulting with the other. It’s what we call the draft era.”

Adrián Herzkovich, Senior VP and General Manager at Fox Latin American Channel (FLAC), says to Prensario that more and more frequently new programming projects are agreed upon with main operators. This is attained through up to five meeting sessions, one every two months, where the project objectives and its characteristics are drawn, and the necessary feedback to adequate it to customer needs is received.

FLAC handles presently a 30-channel package, with new launches being continually considered: “Without fear of exaggeration,” Herzcovich observes, “whenever we receive the news of some strategic launch, we are happy to improve the channel stock we offer our clients, but finding out how are we going to do it with the always limited resources we are counting on causes us certain uneasiness, adding more effort y business tension.”

 “Over time, that uneasiness turns into contentment as we receive spontaneous words of congratulation, six months or a year after releasing the product.” He cites as an example the Utilisima case, a signal created by Ernesto Sandler received in full operation and which was reformulated “as in a facelift. Now people are watching it better and subscribers are satisfied because they are witness to a greater production level, a greater technical quality.”

 “It’s a challenge, because cable operators receive a product where, with no price modification, we are incorporating an added value and make possible a better use of the marketing strategies they devise They tell us that, when making their inner promotion campaigns, they obtain a higher impact and better results if applied to FLAC channels.”

 “Anyway, we don’t want to be identified as a ‘big’ company for having 30 signals, but for that signals’ value, for their creativity. We are functional to cable operators because, when we add things for them we speak about value, not about price.”

 “On the other hand, operators are needing increasingly more help from programmers for online communication with their clients. That’s where the making of programming packages—being Moviecity Mundo and Moviecity Play the most recent ones—must fulfill the operators’ needs and really add value to their proposal to subscribers.”