In this Client Corner we talk with David Albareda, Managing Director at DEVISED, exclusive agent of 2 distribution companies of factual content in Spain and 7 in Latin America. It comes as no surprise that the Barcelona based company has access to a broad range of factual productions, covering almost every genre.
Tell us about DEVISED and the services it offers.
DEVISED presents every year hundreds of new programs to its clients in LatAm, US Hispanic, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand. In those territories, we are the exclusive agent of some of the most reputed international distributors of factual content. Through their representation, we have access to the broadest range of productions from all over the world, allowing us to put together themed presentations and package content related to virtually any subject.
DEVISED distributes content in Australia and New Zealand, Latin America and Spain. What differences have you found between each of these territories?
In Australia and New Zealand, it is extremely difficult to place content that wasn’t produced originally in English. Localization of programs -mostly with subtitles- has seen a huge increase in the last 3-4 years, but it still represents a fraction of the content made available to audiences down under, and it has been driven by the insatiable demand for drama series.
In Latin America, we often localize the content for our customers. It is a service that we provide to make it easier for them to acquire and program international content, although it takes up some of the time we could allocate on other projects as well as our business development efforts.
In Spain, most of our clients localize the content themselves, so that is not an issue. Unfortunately, their versions are not accepted in Latin America and vice versa.
DEVISED has been operating in Latin America since 2015. What changes have occurred in this market during the last 4 years and what trends do you predict for the near future?
In the last couple of years, a major challenge for us has been the electoral procedures in some Latin American countries and their effects on content distribution, especially in terms of decision-making processes and timetables in public broadcasters. But at the end of the day, we were able to help the new directors and executives to bring their programming strategies to life, providing inspiring content to their viewers.
At content level, we’ve seen a similar evolution in programming trends as in the rest of the world for linear TV channels: they tend to focus on live shows and try to get hold of popular telenovelas and drama series in general.
We expect our clients to invest more in making their offering available to customers in non-linear platforms, which will result in a tighter competition for exclusive VOD rights.
You will participate in MIPCancun in November. What should we look forward to?
In 2019 we have signed two more exclusive representations for Latin America, adding literally hundreds of hours of content to our catalog. Also, our localization efforts have been massive this year and we are very proud to be able to offer several long running factual series dubbed in neutral Spanish, as well as many new compelling and emotional documentary one-offs and mini-series.
We are also very excited about our special programming about Japan and on Olympic sports, which will be the center of attention next year with the Summer Games.
Haymillian is providing you with dubbing services into Latin American Spanish. Can you talk about your experience so far and where you think Haymillian is making a difference?
We are very satisfied with our cooperation with Haymillian. We feel that the company has a genuine interest in excelling with the quality of its works. Some of the documentaries Haymillian dubbed for us were extremely difficult because they included characters going through strong emotions and the voice over was as accurate and convincing as that of a Hollywood movie. We are happy to have Haymillian as a localization partner, knowing that we can expect to get top quality versions on a consistent basis.
