A Dramatic Move
Cristina Saralegui has signed on for nine episodes of NBC's 'Passions,' part of a strategy in the soap industry to woo Latino viewers and boost the genre's audience.
By DANA CALVO, Times Staff Writer
In the entertainment food
chain, Cristina Saralegui is such a big fish that she can--with impunity--rattle
off the names of this country's
A-list Latino stars who could not do an interview on her
Spanish-language talk show without a translator. She has so much impact
that
when Oscar De La Hoya was her guest, he nailed down a
record deal.
"What am I going to do with
a boxer for an hour?" Saralegui asked. "We put a hat on him and gave him
a microphone and had him sing
mariachi."
In the Spanish-speaking
world, Saralegui is everywhere. The blond Cuban exile has been a AT&T
spokeswoman for the better part of a
decade. Since 1989, her syndicated talk show, "Cristina,"
has drawn a worldwide audience of 100 million. Her radio show runs five
times a
week all over America. And the magazine she named after
herself reaches more than 121,000 readers in the United States.
So, next month, if bilingual
soap opera viewers start to sense that their make-believe galaxies are
feeling a little familiar, there's a reason.
Saralegui is making a nine-episode
guest appearance on NBC's "Passions," as part of a trend among the largest
television networks to
woo Latino viewers. In the last six months, the most popular
soap operas have added a Spanish audio feed, Latino characters and, in
one
case, even modeled the plots on the short story arcs that
help make Spanish-language soap operas, telenovelas, so addictive.
And this summer NBC will
issue its weekly soap opera summaries in Spanish to Spanish-language newspapers.
"Passions" is just 2 years
old, and its young cast is geared toward an audience ages 12 to 17. The
strategy has worked--"Passions" is
now the most popular soap among teenagers. But NBC wants
the program to find a place in the daily regimen of young Latinas in much
the
same way that afternoon telenovelas have been able to
do on Spanish-language television.
These Latino viewer-outreach
strategies are the result of desperate times for the daytime drama industry.
The massive female audience has peeled away over the last six years, and
many say it began with the O.J. Simpson trial, which gutted and preempted
most daily programming with a "reality soap opera."
The market then splintered
with a glut of afternoon talk shows and strategic networks, such as Lifetime
and HGTV, which went after the very audience base that daytime dramas used
to call their own. "When one reviews the general decline in ratings of
daytime television, we look at aggressive ways to attract more viewers.
This soap has a Hispanic, African
American and two Caucasian families as our core families,"
said Sheraton Kalouria, senior vice president of daytime programs at NBC.
"When we thought about this summer and bringing new viewers, we thought
of Cristina as a dream."
Saralegui plays Tía
Cristina, who comes with her husband from a vague place called "the old
country." They've arrived for a double wedding in the show's town of Harmony.
Saralegui's on-screen husband is played by Emiliano Diez,
who has starred on a Spanish-language sitcom for the last two years.
"They were looking for someone
who was well-known in the Hispanic market. I didn't have an audition for
it," Diez said, pointing out that both he and Saralegui were pleasantly
surprised by the number of Spanish phrases written into the script.
"We were not expecting that
because it's an American soap on an English network, but . . . there is
a Hispanic audience out there, and we should play to them," Diez said,
moving in and out of Spanish and English with ease.
While NBC's ratings machine
is using Saralegui as a lure, she sees it another way. She reminds a visitor
that she is one of the most powerful and wealthy female media moguls in
this country, who has her own production studio and can call her own shots.
That said, she took two weeks off for the first time since 1993 to do this
guest appearance because she believes it is critical for the community.
"It is important for the
Latinos. It is important both ways--in Spanish and English," Saralegui
said. "This is not a network thing. This is a Hispanic thing. We need more
of our people to get work in both languages."
Less than a month ago, CBS'
"The Bold and the Beautiful" introduced two regular Latino characters--Paulo
Benedeti, who plays Latino fashion designer Eddie Dominguez, and Sandra
Vidal, who plays Sofia Alonso, a fashion model who has a past with him.
Additionally, CBS added a long-awaited Spanish-language audio feed to the
world's most-watched daytime drama.
It's difficult to tell if
the strategy will significantly help ratings in the long run, but statistics
for mid-June compared with that same week last year show "The Bold and
the Beautiful" losing viewers.
In December, ABC began spooling
out plots on "Port Charles" in 13-week "books" that offered resolution.
At first glance, it seems like a formula that would enable people to float
in and out of the show. Certainly the success of telenovelas on Spanish-language
television has proved that viewers feel satisfied by the conclusions and
are refreshed enough to gear up for the next short-term story.
ABC's approach seems to
be working. Since December, the number of "Port Charles" viewers, ages
15-24, has increased by 20 percent. And those are exactly the kind of numbers
that reassure executives that young women will continue watching and, in
the best network scenario, watch the shows with their daughters in years
to come.
Felicia Minei Behr, senior
vice president of ABC Daytime Programming, said the telenovela "book" style
on "Port Charles" indulged the short attention spans of younger viewers.
"They like to get it going
and boom! Every four weeks we give them a payoff, and every 13 weeks we
resolve the book," Behr said. "We ask them to drop in. They don't need
to commit for 20 years."
* * *
"Passions" can be seen weekdays
at 2 p.m. on NBC; "The Bold and the Beautiful," weekdays at 12:30 p.m.
on CBS. Both have been rated TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger
than 14). "Port Charles" can be seen weekdays at 11:30 a.m. on ABC. The
network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).