Patricio Hernández, executive director of Megamedia from Chile, covered, among other topics, the immediate future of original production in a country that just went through a social outburst, enters into a recessive economic stage and has registered a 50% drop in advertising investment.
The recovery horizon of the investment, in the current context, “is not six months but 24″ and the level of production must be adjusted to that return rhythm so as not to increase losses, which would be relevant due to the downfall of the advertising spend. At the same time, it will be necessary to produce under strict sanitary conditions.
“We have the advantage that there is a large audience watching us (the audience in Chile grew by 25%), and we will have to find a way to recover our production levels. But it is not about shooting for the sake of shooting recklessly, it is necessary to shoot with human, sanitary, and additionally, economic sustainability,” explained Hernández.
He furthered that entertainment formats, which can be made with social distancing, are more feasible than fiction, which will require a change in scripts and shooting mechanisms that can affect the stories. “We must ask ourselves if those formats are going to have enough massiveness to capture an audience that is tempted by platforms. Fiction via zoom can be made, the point is what levels of ratings it is going to have. Innovating for the sake of innovating and having a little rating, in consequence, is also useless. The challenges are sanitary, economic, and competitive” said the executive director of Megamedia.
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