Monte Carlo gets Latin format biz into its fold.

This year's Monte Carlo TV Festival put great emphasis on Spanish-language television with a "Focus on Latin America" session, centering on formats--the Festival's branded theme.

The status of reality shows in Latin America is that they continue to reign in Brazil, are losing momentum in Mexico and in Argentina are back on the schedule. Overall, however, Latin America is recuperating from reality overkill.

Maria Immacolata Vassallo of San Paulo University in Brazil wrote that, in her country, formats are creeping into telenovelas with documentaries mixing news and live interviews, where actors' and non-actors' roles become blurred. Professor Vassallo added that reality shows in Latin America have been on television for many years, but now they have reached their peak mainly because they are replacing a "scarcity of creative resources." An academic text for the genre is a book by Gloria Salo, Que es eso del formato? Como nasce y se desarrolla un programa de television (Editorial Gedisa, Barcelona).

To moderate the well-attended "Focus on Latin America" session on July 1, the third day of the five-day event held at Monaco's Grimaldi Forum, was VideoAge editor, Dom Serafini. The moderator's premises were that, "Selling formats across Latin America is very difficult. First, there are too many formats out there; second, except for Argentina, no other major territory will pin a format against a telenovela; third, it's expensive to produce formats--in addition to the license fee, there are production costs--and fourth, selling formats is a time-consuming process. Also, except for large networks like Televisa and Telefe, most broadcasters do not have divisions focusing solely on formats."

Among the four panelists were: Gonzalo Cilley, who is in charge of the formats and the international production division at Argentina's Telefe and advised participants that, "You need to be patient, friendly, flexible and persistent without being pushy, but most of all you need to be there."

Eduardo Clemesha, who is the head of formats and new content for Mexico's Televisa also sat on the panel. He replaced Promofilm's Marcela Campos of Argentina, who had to cancel at the last minute.

The panel also included Maria Alicia Parkerson, who has headed the format department of Tepuy International for the past two years. The distribution company, with key offices in Spain, the U.S. and Venezuela, represents Endemol in selected territories in Latin America. Parkerson's advice was that, "It is important to understand and respect the region's local cultures and viewing habits, as characterized by the telenovela." Prior to the conference, Promofilm's Campos commented that, "In Latin America, the fusion of reality and novela is inevitable, necessary and constitutes a true formula for success."

Pedro Font, who is the founding president of New York-based Global Media Distribution, also attended. GMD distributes Televisa's telenovelas in Asia, Africa, Middle East, Russia, Germany and Greece. Font came to television from the advertising side, as funding president of an ad agency for the Hispanic market that he later sold to Gray Advertising. At the Monte Carlo session, he presented a video illustrating how the popularity of telenovelas in Latin America and other parts of the world has made the leading actresses and actors bonified superstars on par with Hollywood's brightest.

The reality format, which proved a winning formula for the new Monte Carlo TV Festival, was the topic of a total of six panel sessions with moderators such as Michel Rodrigue of Canada's Distraction Formats, and Mirko Whitfield of Germany's TvFormats. Among the panelists there were: Yair Landau, vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment; Tony Vinciquerra, CEO of Fox Networks Group; Toni Erickson-Knight, CEO of Worldlink and Farrell Meisel, senior managing consultant of Middle East TV Network, Alhurra TV.

The 45th edition of the Monte Carlo TV Festival, which awards Gold Nymphs in five categories of TV programs, will be held June 26-July 1, 2005.

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One of the most stimulating panelists at the Monte Carlo TV Festival was Toni Erickson-Knight (pictured), founder and CEO of WorldLink Group. The Los Angeles-based group includes WorldLink Media Sales, a company she founded in 1997, specializing in the sale of direct response television time for regional cable channels.

In effect, WorldLink competes for TV time slots with program distributors. By pegging cash programming against barter sale or direct response sales, programmers are now able to find the most profitable way to monetize each of the TV outlet's time slots.

Since then, the organization's clientele has grown to more than 200 national, local and regional cable networks, broadcast television stations and group owners, domestic program syndicators, networks throughout Latin America, Europe and Asia and unwired media outlets.

WorldLink is now the largest independent rep firm serving the Hispanic market and it has relationships with over 250 advertising agencies around the world.

Prior to forming WorldLink, Erickson-Knight spent eight years at Fox Sports Net and its predecessors, Liberty Sports, Prime Sports West and Prime Ticket Network.