Mexico City – Imagen Televisión is the newest Mexican broadcast television network to launch in over 20 years. According to HR Media Research Center, Imagen TV is the third free-air network launched on October 17, 2016, registering more than 600,000 viewers.
Imagen TV is a strategic vision that comes from Olegario Vázquez Aldir, CEO of Grupo Empresarial Angeles. The network is set to offer Mexican audiences competitive products at the national and international level. At the same time, it becomes the third new network of open television in Mexico that will compete with its rival Grupo Televisa and TV Azteca.
The network’s content includes a significant component of Mexican-made original productions and hit shows from around the world. The newbie network is focused on programming that comprises fiction, news, entertainment and sports genres, in what they hope will be a winning strategy.
Javier Alarcón and Eugenio Derbez one a few Mexican-known talent providing content
The new channel’s proposal it is not only to provide a wider and more varied range of TV shows but also to inspire younger generations so they can see the world through different lens.
For Vázquez Aldir, news and TV series are two of the most important focus of attention for the network. Imagen Televisión will make alliance with Argos, a production company owned by journalist Epigmenio Ibarra (Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas, Mirada de Mujer, Las Aparicio). Argos centers its vision on more critical and socially conscious productions and not on the typical telenovelas’ stories. Ibarra recently denied connections with Televisa’s Blim in the near future.
In the entertainment section, Imagen’s morning television show Sale el Sol competes against Televisa’s Hoy and Viva la Alegria, from TV Azteca. Sale el Sol with its entertainment interviews, special-interest stories and other segments dedicated to different viewers enlists the talents of hosts Luz María Zetina, Mauricio Barcelata, Carlos Arenas, Paulina Mercado and Hector Vargas.
Javier Alarcón, former Televisa deportes director and Yuriria Sierra, Francisco Zea, Hector Miguel Zelada are also part of the new Imagen Televisión team.
‘Sale el Sol’ hosts
The launching of Imagen Televisión comes in the middle of the financial turmoil, the rating crisis and reputation of both Televisa and TV Azteca.
Despite the strategic movements in the programming and content ordered by Grupo Televisa President Emilio Azcarraga Jean, the ratings and advertising revenues of the most important Spanish-language television company are still dropping. Both Televisa and Azteca recently registered another severe net profit decline. According to Proceso Magazine, in the first quarter of 2016, Televisa notified a lose of 84% in its net profit.
In a recent poll by HR Media and Nielsen Ibope, the results found that Televisa’s programming is losing viewers across the board; in soap operas or telenovelas, comedy shows and their informative spaces. Nowadays with audiences preferring to interact more on social media, Netflix and other OTTs or watch alternative content in another open networks.
Vázquez Aldir describes Imagen’s programming approach as “a family channel, with a focus on women” and although they are focuses in expanding beyond the Televisia template, they are still including the tried and true telenovela, launching with two original telenovelas, El capo and Vuelve temprano produced in collaboration with Argos Comunicación and Estudios TeleMexico, with two telenovelas from Brazil and one from Colombia also airing.
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