Earlier this month, as buyers and sellers around the world put the finishing touches to their Mip TV plans, GMA Worldwide Inc (GWI) announced a local version of Philippines’ drama, Munting Heredera (Little Heiress), was being made in Mexico.
The drama, about a grandmother’s search for her heiress, will be produced by Mexican company Telefilm Atlantico, and carries with it high hopes of being a trailblazer for GMA stories in that part of the world.
Munting Heredera is GMA’s first drama format licensing sale in Latin America, and the deal runs alongside Canada’s Rogers Media acquisition of a package of HD titles, including My Destiny, Second Chances (Another Chance) and Beautiful Strangers for its free-TV channel.
GWI vice president, Roxanne Barcelona, GMA’s most familiar face on the international content stage, couldn’t have thought of a better 20th anniversary present.
“Our presence in various territories proves that our content is relevant and favoured not just among Filipino viewers but more importantly, among foreign viewers as well,” she says.
It’s been a long haul – and there’s a long way to go.
GMA Worldwide opened its doors for business in February 1996 as the acquisition and distribution arm of broadcaster GMA Network, kicking off two decades of taking GMA’s Filipino content story to the region and the world.
The new deals top steady growth in Asia and Africa, Barcelona says, hoping to add Turkey and Papua New Guinea to her list of partners for both finished content and drama formats. Eastern Europe is also on GMA’s radar.
“For GMA drama to succeed, it is necessary that our stories can relate to our domestic and overseas audience,” Barcelona says. “We hope that with the sale of Munting Heredera to Mexico, that perhaps our canned dramas find their way into that market as well or to other Latin American countries,” she adds.
She also sees opportunities in the next three years in Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia, all of which are emerging markets in Asia for GMA’s finished dramas.
GMA Worldwide’s biggest achiev...
Earlier this month, as buyers and sellers around the world put the finishing touches to their Mip TV plans, GMA Worldwide Inc (GWI) announced a local version of Philippines’ drama, Munting Heredera (Little Heiress), was being made in Mexico.
The drama, about a grandmother’s search for her heiress, will be produced by Mexican company Telefilm Atlantico, and carries with it high hopes of being a trailblazer for GMA stories in that part of the world.
Munting Heredera is GMA’s first drama format licensing sale in Latin America, and the deal runs alongside Canada’s Rogers Media acquisition of a package of HD titles, including My Destiny, Second Chances (Another Chance) and Beautiful Strangers for its free-TV channel.
GWI vice president, Roxanne Barcelona, GMA’s most familiar face on the international content stage, couldn’t have thought of a better 20th anniversary present.
“Our presence in various territories proves that our content is relevant and favoured not just among Filipino viewers but more importantly, among foreign viewers as well,” she says.
It’s been a long haul – and there’s a long way to go.
GMA Worldwide opened its doors for business in February 1996 as the acquisition and distribution arm of broadcaster GMA Network, kicking off two decades of taking GMA’s Filipino content story to the region and the world.
The new deals top steady growth in Asia and Africa, Barcelona says, hoping to add Turkey and Papua New Guinea to her list of partners for both finished content and drama formats. Eastern Europe is also on GMA’s radar.
“For GMA drama to succeed, it is necessary that our stories can relate to our domestic and overseas audience,” Barcelona says. “We hope that with the sale of Munting Heredera to Mexico, that perhaps our canned dramas find their way into that market as well or to other Latin American countries,” she adds.
She also sees opportunities in the next three years in Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia, all of which are emerging markets in Asia for GMA’s finished dramas.
GMA Worldwide’s biggest achievement in the past 20 years has been building up a distribution network on the licensing/syndication side and, on the acquisitions side, its contribution to GMA Networks ratings success, Barcelona says. The unit was, until the middle of last year, responsible for programme acquisitions for the domestic network.
One of the biggest challenges in the early days was introducing Filipino drama to Southeast Asia and to the rest of the world, and building a client base, Barcelona says.
Today, Barcelona says top-selling title The Impostor (39 episodes x 45 minutes)has been sold to more than 14 countries. And it’s not just for services targetting Filipino expats. Barcelona says GMA dramas are dubbed or subtitled in local languages to increase appeal among domestical audiences.
“Our target audience are not Filipino expats but rather, we want to reach the local audience of the countries we sell to,” she says. Over-the-top services are a different story; those, she says, will appeal to Filipino expats.
Looking back, would she have done anything different? “That’s a hard question to answer,” she says, adding: “We are a small company and yet we dream big. I cannot think of anything we would have done differently to get to where we are today”.
Published on 21 March 2016