Leopoldo Gomez de TelevisaUnivision
Despite that Noticias Univision 24/7, TelevisaUnivision’s ViX streaming news channel has not yet completed a year since its launching, it has accomplished “very good results”, and the network is pleased with its performance, said Leopoldo Gómez, president of News at TelevisaUnivision.
“Streaming is definitely the future, and that is why we are making that bet with Univision News 24/7. And even if it is really the future, it is also the beginning of the present”, he pointed out.
Some of the lessons of the experience from the pandemic regarding news production were to use replacement teams to avoid working remotely. According to Gómez, working remotely, in the end, resulted in “an inferior broadcast product compared with when we are all together. Now we try to avoid that, using replacement hosts, producers, and writers, in order to continue to work remotely in case they get sick,” he said.
One of the most relevant events that they covered last year was the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “It was crucial coverage, we even were the first on open TV in the US to send one of our main anchors to cover the war. Jorge Ramos was reporting from Ukraine and Poland” he said.
They also covered the repeated acts of gun violence in Uvalde, Texas; Buffalo, New York, among others; and the death of the idol Vicente Fernández. “We covered the death of Vicente Fernández in December, a musical icon for so many Hispanics. That was very important content,” he said.
Gómez considers social media as “a megaphone” that politicians, celebrities, and famous figures have directly with the public. “It turns out that we frequently get more statements from them in public than we did before. It is also a megaphone for those who are not famous, common people, or citizens that have something important to say, some event they’ve witnessed and recorded that regularly ends up on the networks. But the negative side is there is too much information. No one can consume everything that is published on the networks. We can curate everything and present the audience with the most interesting pots in a way that complements our coverage,” he explained.
Regarding fake news, he said that Univision Noticias 24/7, where they have more time for greater coverage, is especially useful to “refute the liars and clarify the information, especially if it comes from those who tangle with the truth. So we have the opportunity to dissect the news, which sometimes in a TV newscast of just 30 minutes is not feasible, because there really is not enough time” he concluded.
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