The Univision Noticias 24/7 channel that was officially launched this Wednesday, December 1 on PrendeTV, began on the soft-launch phase with six hours of programming. On February 14 it will go at full schedule.
“This launch has two moments, the current one that we call a soft-launch where we are producing three programs a day of two hours each –La Voz de la Mañana, the noon newscast, and the primetime newscast- and on February 14 we will complement those programs with many others. The core emphasis will be news,” explained Leopoldo Gómez, President of Univision Noticias, who led the presentation of the new channel to the media at the Newsport headquarters in Doral. Mara Farina, VP of Univision Noticias en Vivo, and the talents Carolina Peguero, Carolina Rosario, Aylen del Toro, Carolina Sarassa, Paulina Sodi, Andrea Linares and Borja Voces, joined Gomez during the launching.
On February 14, 2022, a talk show hosted by Patricia Janiot and a weekly space hosted by Jorge Ramos will be part of the channel’s grid. “We are going to include a program of debates, opinion topics, and within the news spaces, we will add sections on lifestyle, entertainment, personal finances, topics that are of broad interest to people. It will be a solid grill with journalistic programs,” Gómez said.
Almost 90 people work directly on the project, complemented with the support of the linear channel team. They also opened three offices: Phoenix, Houston, and Chicago.
Gómez made clear that the News area was left out of the Televisa-Univision merger -which will soon become official-, because news is a very local issue.
He added that when Univision’s global SVOD launches in 2022, they want to propose journalistic documentaries to air on that tier. “We have talked with people who buy content, which is interested in what the research area has done, to see if we can put together some good documentaries and we are starting the conversations. But at this time a specific news channel is not being considered, just documentaries.”