Univision’s Luis Silberwasser Talks Vision For Company And Merger With Televisa Prior To 2021-2022 Upfront

Four months after joining Univision as President of its Television Networks Group, Luis Silberwasser is about to participate in his first Upfront for the company. He's no stranger to these yearly events, having taken part in many throughout his lengthy career leading broadcast companies such as Discovery Networks International and most recently, Telemundo, where he is credited for leading the transformation of the network, changing the programming strategy and improving its ranking in the television space. It was under his leadership that Telemundo beat Univision in Spanish-language primetime ratings for the first time in its history - position lost in 2018 after he departed his now rival network.

Silberwasser's first Univision Upfront presentation also comes just one month after the executive leadership announced a $4.8 billion merger deal with Televisa, which, after all regulatory approvals, will lead to the creation of a new combined entity named Televisa-Univision.

Leading up to the event, Silberwasser talks about the new role, his vision in shaping the company's programming and the merger with Televisa.

How are you settling into the new job?

Great. I love it. The company is in the middle of a transformation with regards to what is going to be in the future. And to help lead the television networks group in that part of the transformation is very exciting. There's a great team here already that I enjoy working with, with a lot of great ideas and the desire to do important things. 

What is your vision for programming in prime time?

I'll start with sort of the audience. The relationship Univision has with the Hispanic audience in the U.S. is a great asset. They come to us for news...to know what's going on, especially during the pandemic. We have sports... and entertainment - drama, reality shows. My vision is that we need to double down on those things and try to bring even more of those sort of cultural moments that help strengthen that relationship. In many cases, what we do is big. More than 50% of our daily shows are live....90% of our viewership is live in primetime. There's a connection, an immediacy that Univision has with its viewers that I would like to take to a higher level, with bigger events, bigger dramas, bigger strategies.

For example, our Sunday night strategy is called domingos en familia (Family Sundays) - a place for families to come watch. We have a great foundation. I think we need to keep building on that foundation to try to make our programming bigger and better. 

I always talk about a few lenses that we look at when we select programming. It has to be big. It has to be, in many cases, live, or have that sort of immediacy and high stakes - the ability to make people not want to miss it -even the novelas. I don't find a lot of people who DVR the novelas. I want those products to continue. As I look into the future, clearly there's more competition out there; there's different platforms. But some things remain the same. Big ideas, great talent, great storytelling continue to be valued and those are the things that you'll see us do more as time goes by. 

How is the merger with Televisa going to impact Univision's overall programming goals and growth moving forward?

It's early to say. The transaction was only announced recently and it takes a while to get approved. We have a very strong programming and creative relationship, where the team here in Univision and the team in Televisa work together to create and decide and figure out what are the best shows to bring to this market - in the United States. We look forward to an even closer collaboration, where artificial boundaries - since we were sort of two separate companies - may no longer be there in the future because it would be just one company. And I think the decision making process will probably get easier and the creative conversations even stronger and more robust.

Is your programming strategy going to be defined by streaming?

Our streaming plans are in development. We do believe that there are different needs and different audiences for linear and streaming platforms. We don't see these things as overlapping. We will create programming that is for the linear networks and there will be different programming that is for the streaming networks. And those shows will appeal to different types of audiences. 

What's interesting about the merger and about the future of Univision is that we'll be able to do both things and reach even more viewers because we're now going to have a complementary platform that we didn't have before.

What will you be unveiling in your Upfront presentation?

We've come up with two new tentpoles. Usually our strategy for tentpoles is really rooted on music (such as the Latin Grammys). But now, we’re adding two big new initiatives to the calendar.

One is TUDN MegaFest - a sports and entertainment initiative that pairs the champions of the Liga MX “Campeón de Campeones” with a music concert, a gala event where we showcase the best players from the Mexican League.

The second one is UniVisionarios. We want to create a prestigious premiere event where we recognize pioneers, game changers, Hispanics who have really made incredible contributions to our community in the U.S. All of our networks will participate during the year to select the people who have gone beyond and helped others...in music, art, technology, business and politics. After 9 or 12 months we’ll have a gala, where the audience will play a role in voting for those UniVisionarios.

We are also investing heavily on our morning show Despierta América, which is the number one morning show in U.S. Hispanic market. We are extending this very successful franchise with a Sunday morning edition starting at the end of the year. 

On the drama side, we've had great success with "The collection," shorter dramas, inspired or reimagined from popular older novelas. We're launching a remake of Los Ricos También Lloran (The Rich Also Cry, announced in the 2019-2020 Upfronts but didn’t make it to air in that season). We're really excited about that because we also want to go in that direction - to create things that are more premium in production values, shorter storytelling, faster pace and edgier, and that we also want to have in our primetime on Univision. 

Part of the strategy is... we have Univision, but we also have Unimás. A lot of people don't pay attention to Unimás but it's growing nicely. The foundation of that growth really has to do with dating reality show Enamorándonos. It’s a complementary strategy to Univision. When people come in primetime for the drama, the music events, the reality shows, then Unimás is going to be much more rooted in entertainment, live programming and daily entertainment. We're going to build on Enamorándonos and create even more entertainment properties around it. 

Will you continue incorporating Turkish novelas in your lineup?

Most of our product comes from Televisa. But we also know that there's space for some of these great stories that we find, whether it's in Turkey, Brazil or Colombia. We don't rely completely on them, but every once in a while we find something that is really really cool, has those values of storytelling and that we believe our Hispanic audience wants. So, yes. We will continue. Is it the core of our strategy? No. But every time we find something, we're not afraid to have it on Univision or Unimás. 

Given the success of shorter series on streaming platforms, will you be moving towards novelas with less episodes?

I think there is value in the variety. I think that Hispanic audiences like any other audiences are not only looking for one thing. We've had tremendous success with products that are 80, 100 episodes. And we see it even today. Some of our best shows have been long-form novelas. At the same time, I do believe that there is space within our primetime for something that is no shorter and maybe a different theme, that is edgier. So I think there's an appetite for both, depending on the story. It's about giving the audience what they want and keeping the audience on your channel.