Atresmedia is the leading TV group in Spain, but as in every market in the world, it has suffered a strong fall in the advertising market during the pandemic: 18%. ‘However, the time of TV consumption was one of the largest in our history due to the lockdown’, indicated Jose Antonio Salso, Head of acquisitions and Sales.
‘One of the main challenges for the next months is to diversify the company businesses. On one hand, we want to reinforce our SVOD strategy through ATRESplayer Premium, which already has 452,000 subscribers. And on the other hand, we want to go international with channels, platforms and programming distribution such us Veneno (HBO Max USA) or Toy Boy (Netflix)’.
About the content search at LA Virtual Screenings, Salso completed: ‘We are looking for fresh, good quality and international stories that can attract and connect with our Spanish audience’.
Female talent is a big driver in the industry: Worldwide Audiovisual Women’s Association (WAWA), a non-profit association that gathers top executives of the industry, are focused in expanding their business globally. Its Chairman, Roxana Rotundo, was part of the testimonials and she remarked: ‘2020 was an incredible year for us with many projects accomplished, while this year we were able to organize and produce the first WAWA Business Forum in March: a three-days event aimed at generating as much business as possible for our associated companies’.
WAWA has made alliances with entities like Conecta Fiction, Egeda, MIPTV, International Emmy, Ibermedia, MIPCancun, Film Market Hub and Prensario,for which it is participating with an own bothat LA Virtual Screenings offering productions from their associates VIP 2000 TV (USA), Spring Media (Sweden) and Metro TV (Colombia) while promoting WAWA worldwide.
‘We are very proud with these partnerships and how they helped us to achieve our goals every year. Our board is also very active creating own events that are different from other organizations, such us First Look, whose first edition was on May 6 focused on the Turkish industry. We are planning new ones about different topics’.
This month, WAWA continues to promote its “Inspiring Minds” events with awarded female talent from around the world. The first edition was with Camilla Hammerich, the renowned executive producer in charge of successful noir dramas The Killing and Borgen. The session will premiere on LAVS on May 19. The association has also produced a second session with Chilean director Marcela Said, in charge of Netflix’s Narcos and Lupin, which take place last month.
New Testimonials of the Industry are being published every day on VS Next portion of LAVS 2021
