2022 has seen successful Latin American productions on Netflix. Paco Ramos, VP of Content of the platform, highlighted with special emphasis documentaries such as El Cartero and Sean Eternos (Argentina), El Caso Casses-Vallarta: Una Novela Criminal (Mexico), Goles en Contra (Colombia), among others.
“Our content has to have a bound to what’s going on in society at the moment the program is produced and the documentary is a very strong format for this. We want the user to perceive us not only as the best content producers in the world, but also as those who produce locally (…) The Documentary is the backbone of society and its force always positions you in a more powerful place,” said Ramos at the conference during Ventana Sur.
He also said that rather than in quantity, they are focusing on increasing their diversity offer and currently they’re making both large and small productions. Within this position, Netflix teams are increasingly specialized in genres and there is also a licensing team. The idea is that each piece reaches as many people as possible, taking care of the specificities of each product. “We cannot expect that El Agente Topo de Maite Alberdi will reach the same number of viewers as Granizo.”
He added that the best products are those with authenticity and a personal point of view, while he raised the need to embrace new voices with the best technical and creative support because they are the future.
In his view, in two or three years the impact of local content will show its potential and quality. “I am optimistic because the success of Squid or of La Casa de Papel shows that the passport is not that the production is in English, but its quality, perspective and specificity. And this will encourage non-English-speaking countries to produce with more ambition because that barrier is broken. Soon the language or place of origin of a production will be no more than an item on the technical sheet. There are 500 million people who speak Spanish in the world and the future is the content in Spanish”.
Ramos also referred to the AVOD that Netflix already launched in 12 countries, two of which are Latin American (Brazil and Mexico). “We invest a lot of money a year in co-producing and licensing content, so we have to try to get that content to more people and if a cheaper way is the way, then it is important. The decision is in the hands of the consumers.”
He assured that the offer with advertising does not offer less content than the premium version, only some cases that do not have the rights to broadcast with ads. “Our strategy continues to be to have the best content. And the content team has nothing to do with AVOD. We have not stopped buying or bought anything specifically for this model. We look for the highest common denominator, not the lowest.”