Telemundo Shall Launch Telemundo Plus (T+) With World Cup To Push Its Kick Off Streaming Service! Plus A 24-hour Streaming News Service.

Telemundo Shall Launch Telemundo Plus (T+) With World Cup To Push Its Kick Off Streaming Service! Plus A 24-hour Streaming News Service.

"Telemundo is no stranger to streaming video. It’s been in the space for a decade, often as a producer of content for other services.

This year, however, the NBCUniversal-owned Spanish-language media company is planning a renewed push into streaming, with a slate of content and new streaming brands that it will fully control. Those launches include the previously-announced Tplus, but also a new 24-hour streaming news service called Noticias Telemundo Ahora, which will launch in partnership with NBC News Now, the NBC News Group’s free streaming service.

It’s all part of what Telemundo Enterprises chairman Beau Ferrari frames as a strategy to “super-serve the full spectrum of Hispanics on streaming.” That includes young and old, Spanish-speakers and those who are multilingual, cord-cutters and cord-nevers, but also those who still watch linear television.

“The Hispanic opportunity is bigger than ever, we are focused on every company in America needing to tap into this segment of the population in order to future-proof their business,” Ferrari tells The Hollywood Reporter.

At the heart of the push is Tplus, a new entertainment brand that will include both English and Spanish-language fare and live within Peacock, NBCUniversal’s corporate streaming service. Ferrari says that Telemundo will use the 2022 FIFA World Cup as a launching pad for Tplus, with all of the matches set to stream on the service, alongside studio shows, highlights and analysis. The bet is that consumers watching soccer will stick around for the dramas, reality shows and telenovelas available on Tplus.

“The launch will happen around the World Cup, so we wanted to use the biggest sporting event in the world to launch Tplus,” Ferrari says. “The fact that we have a decade-long experience on the streaming wide of things, and now using the World Cup to enter that on a larger scale, we feel like we are leveraging all of our franchises, all of our assets.”

The company has also ordered a slate of originals for the streaming brand, with Ferrari framing the projects as “highly complementary” to the linear business. Projects include the docu-series The Story of Reggaeton (wt), produced by Daddy Yankee; Keep This to Yourself, a serial killer-drama executive produced by actor/producer Wilmer Valderrama; 90 minutes, a soccer-focused series; and the crime thriller Leopard Skin, which will star Carla Gugino, Ana De La Reguera and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Telemundo also has some projects in development for Tplus, including the doc series Chicano Squad; the reality dating series Love is Relative (from the producers of 90 Day Fiance); and the docu-soap Viva Houston (wt).

Tplus will launch in what will be an increasingly crowded market, with TelevisaUnivision set to launch its global streaming service ViX+ later this year as well. But while TelevisaUnivision is eying a global launch only in Spanish, Telemundo is leaning into the U.S. audience that is more bilingual, and betting that its parent company can help turbocharge that growth.

While streaming is the topic du jour, Ferrari is careful to acknowledge that the broadcast network is still “our core business,” and adds that “we are looking to increase our investments across entertainment, sports, news, big franchises… and then complementing that with a bigger presence in partnership with Peacock on Tplus, and also bigger collaborations with NBCUniversal’s news group and sports group.”

And so Telemundo is rolling out a full network-focused content slate as well. The programming includes live events (most notably the People’s Choice Latin Music Awards, which will debut next year), sports, and of course dramas and reality shows.

Projects include a third season of one of its flagship programs, La Reina del Sur; a new season of one of the network’s longest running series El Señor de los Cielos; the biographical series El Rey: Vicente Fernández; the drama El Conde (based on Alexander Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo); María: La Mexicana (based on Sergio Almazan’s novel Acuérdate María); thriller Culpable o Inocente; anthology series El Doctor de los Milagro; and drama La Mujer de Mi Vida.

And the network has ordered a number of unscripted series, including a celebrity-driven spinoff of Bravo’s Top Chef franchise called Top Chef VIP; and new seasons of La Casa de los Famosos and Exatlón Estados Unidos.

“The fact that we have got scale with the core Telemundo broadcast network, as well as scale with Peacock in reaching this fast-growing full spectrum of Hispanics, we look at them as highly-complementary,” Ferrari adds. “We do it for U.S. Hispanics, we are leaning into content creation for this community, we know the audience better than anyone, their tastes, their preferences.” - Hollywoodreporter.com