"Brasil is the best cable opportunity in the world right now."...........
ijumpstart.com
International Notebook
"Brasil is the best cable opportunity in the world right now. Operators can't build fast enough to keep up," says NextLevel Systems' regional director, Alvaro Pacheco, Jr. While most of that growth has been centered in the country's large coastal cities, the buildout will soon spread to outlying shantytown favelas, where billboards make for good roofing material, kids aspire to the perfect scissors-kick and the flicker of a TV set is the one affordable and legal source of entertainment.
Yesterday was the latest in a seemingly endless series of deadlines for the country's tender of 1,400 new CATV and 400 new MMDS licenses. The Ministry of Communications estimates the new licenses will grow the market from its current 2mln homes (5% penetration/1.8bln trial turnover) to an estimated 10mln homes by 2000. The first licenses tendered will serve uncabled sections of Sao Paulo, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, but the vast majority will be granted to new companies (all of whom will be at this month's inaugural TVLink Brasil show), expanding the Net- and TVA- dominated operator base of about 70 systems. NextLevel Systems has sold about 80% of the boxes currently in use (50% of the company's sales in the region) and has seen revenues grow between 50-100% every year since 1989. While US$35 a month seems like a fortune to anyone who's ever spent time in Sao Paulo or the interior, daily soccer games, clear reception of the steamy telenovelas and yes, sub-titled Seinfeld, are enough to make the entire block happy.
CBS TeleNoticias has appointed Unimark/Longo (Walter Longo) and Connect Pay TV Business (Marcos Amazonas) as Brasilian sales reps for its Portuguese-language version. Unimark/Longo will provide ad sales and marketing support, while Connect will handle affiliate relations and contribute programming elements. Longo -- President of Abraforte, the country's pay TV installer association -- and Amazonas collaborated earlier in launching CMT Brasil during their TVA days. CBS TeleNoticias will launch on the recently-lofted PAS-5 by the end of the month. Marcus Wilson joins the network as Managing Editor. Previously, he had been News Director at Brasilian MSO SBT.
Hot on the heels of PAS-5's launch, Eutelsat successfully placed Hot Bird 3 (its 9th satellite) at 13 degrees East last Tuesday. It's the 4th beamer from that position. International Family Entertainment and Fox Kids Worldwide (an unlikely but formidable coupling) made their union official yesterday.
All this week, ESPN Dos and Televisa's Cablevision have been televising the Beisbol Liga Mexicana's final series between Mexico City arch-rivals Los Diablos Rojos and Los Tigres, a match-up affectionately known as "the civil war." The telecasts will be aired free on one of Cablevision's ppv channels, to preview ESPN Dos (which celebrates its 1st anniversary in October.) MTV Latin America's next 2 "Unpluggeds" showcase Argentine legend Luis Alberto Spinetta and hard rock group Ratones Paranoicos (the paranoid rats). |
