Original Article

Critical Studies in Television:

The International Journal of
Disruption and continuity Television Studies
2019, Vol. 14(2) 204–221
on telenovela with the ª The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1749602019838885

prime-time fictional serial: journals.sagepub.com/home/cst

The super series

Juan Piñón
New York University, USA

Abstract
The Latin American telenovela genre has enjoyed a long-lasting hegemonic position in
prime-time television across the region, and particularly within US Spanish-language
television market. However, in the last several years, Spanish-language national televi-
sion networks, as well as their prime-time telenovela product, are being challenged by
the new digital and mobile media landscape. Television networks have deployed a variety
of strategies to better accommodate to new audiences’ consumption routines in a digital
age. This article focuses on a particular moment of disruption – and continuity –, which
has been a game changer for US Hispanic television and has transformed the face of
fictional serial (telenovelas) in prime time. The surge in popularity of a telenovela sub-
genre originating in Colombia and widely adopted by US television corporations, known
as narconovela, has transformed the telenovela genre/format, prompting industry pro-
fessionals to initiate new institutional discourses aimed to mark these texts as super
series, and in doing so labelling them as a new type of genre. Super series are an excellent
case study for understanding the dialectic notion of disruption and continuity both in
television studies and the television industry.

Keywords
Telenovelas, super series, US Hispanic television, narconovela

Corresponding author:
Juan Piñón, Media, Culture, and Communication Department, New York University, New York, NY 10003,
USA.
Email: jpinon@nyu.edu
Piñón 205

The Latin American telenovela genre has enjoyed a long-lasting hegemonic position in
prime-time television across the region, and particularly within US Spanish-language
television market. However, in the last several years, Spanish-language national tele-
vision networks, as well as their prime-time telenovela product, are being challenged by
the new digital and mobile media landscape. Specifically, the surge of Over-the-Top
(OTT) services and Video-on-Demand (VOD) is disrupting commonly held routines
of audience consumption as they push Telemundo and Televisa/Univision – the main
participant television corporations for the US Hispanic industry – not only to rethink
their traditional telenovela narratives but also to rework the genre. This attempt has
produced the super series: a new televisual product that combines the structural logics of
series with the traditional storytelling style of telenovelas.
Constant narrative innovation has been at the core of telenovela storytelling, making
the Latin American genre relevant over many decades. Clear moments of storytelling
disruption, in different national markets, have also contributed to the constant evolution
of the genre. But I want to focus on a particular moment of disruption – and continuity –,
which has been a game changer in the relationship between the two main Hispanic
television corporations in the United States and transformed the face of fictional serial
(telenovelas) on prime time. The surge in popularity of a telenovela subgenre originating
in Colombia and widely adopted by US television corporations, known as narconovela,
has transformed the telenovela genre/format, prompting industry professionals leading to
the rise of a new institutional discourse aimed to mark these texts as super series thus
labelling as a new type of genre.
Super series are an excellent case for understanding the dialectic notion of disruption
and continuity in television. As a Televisa executive interviews for this study explained:

people want to feel that there is innovation, then you need to offer them new things that still
look familiar to avoid alienating them, while at the same time the show has to have this
innovative element to get their attention. (Executive Televisa. Personal Communication,
13 August 2018, Mexico City)

On the one hand, as I will demonstrate, super series depart from telenovelas, in a
number of key ways; but on the other hand, they also share key elements of the tele-
novela genre, as a consequence of their origin as telenovelas themselves in their itera-
tion as narconovelas. This industrial discourse that surrounds the emergence of the
super series as a new genre or form within the realm of the telenovela universe
reveals some deeply ambivalent interactions between industry players as they discuss
and thus discursively construct the dynamics of generic evolution and recognition
(Mittell, 2004). Telemundo’s marketing effort to position super series as distinctive
televisual product is supported by their surge in prime-time ratings. But as they were
making their arguments about super series, there seem to have been a bit of a pull and
push dynamic of rejection and recognition, in which the professionals adamantly
claim that super series are not telenovelas, signalling that distinction as the sign of
the push for innovation made by the network; but at the same time, acknowledging
their telenovela lineage.
206 Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 14(2)

To investigate this productive tension, I conducted a series of interviews in 2017 and

2018 with high-ranking executives and producers at Telemundo and Televisa (the main
content producers of serial fiction for the US Hispanic prime-time slot). I also inter-
viewed executives at independent productions houses as well as screenwriters involved
in telenovelas, supers series and series production.
This tension between disruption and continuity makes the super series a good
example for the dialectic dynamics of a new hybrid category, created as the industry
negotiated its changing technological and cultural environment. As the screenwriter of
the successful super series El Señor de los Cielos (Lord of the Skies, 2013–) put it: ‘I tried
to keep some dynamics from telenovela narrative, but mixed with the narrative structure
of series, which are close to the English-mainstream series and action-oriented stories’
(Screenwriter El Señor. Personal Communication, 9 July 2018, Miami Florida).
Telemundo’s success with super series in prime-time television not only effectively
challenged Univision’s rating dominance but emboldened the network to push innova-
tion further, resulting in the creation of a new category of genre of sorts, the premium
series. These shows first followed the common weekly broadcast dynamics of the
series, but as a new franchise they have evolved into a telenovela-like daily broadcast
routine. Disrupting the common long number of chapters of serial fiction of classic
telenovelas, the premium series are based on short number of episodes, 10 to 12, pro-
grammed in prime time during 2 weeks, and are changing the way US Spanish-language
television networks operate. All these new iterations fictional seriality mean that stan-
dard prime-time television is under assault. Smaller storytelling arches and the promise
of high production values in the contexts of seriality anchored in a daily viewership
routine are challenging the reign of the telenovela genre.
The nature of this disruption brought about by super series and its industry-wide
implications cannot be fully understood without considering the decades-long domi-
nant position in prime time of the traditional romantic telenovela model produced by
Mexican Televisa and distributed through Univision. Sixty-five per cent of US Latinos
are of Mexican decent and their familiarity with Televisa’s telenovela grammar as a
kind of ‘manufactured cultural proximity’ (Piñón, 2014; Straubhaar, 1991) was key in
the success of Univision prime-time programming. For instance, during the 2000s,
Univision’s prime-time viewership share, year by year tripled in number that of Tel-
emundo’s. This began to change in 2011 with the launch of La Reina del Sur (2011–
2019) and the launch of El Senor de los Cielos in 2013 allowed Telemundo to claim
first place in prime-time viewership within the 18–49 years old demographic in 2017
(Piñon, 2018). The success of the super series as a new televisual commodity set in
motion discursive practices centred on a new and different televisual product, a new
genre category rooted in the idea of better production values, and an increasing
masculinisation of the genre.

How to think about genres

One of the most important goals in the definition of genres is that they help sort and
organise a large amount of content through a set of established conventions guiding
Piñón 207

television industry professionals, media critics and academics alike, who, in turn, set
expectations and behavioural media routines for television audiences. But as Glen
Creeber (2008) argues, genres do not remain static, they evolve and are also the com-
bination of different prior genres, as the result of certain industrial and commercial
pressures that ended up shaping them, and they need to be understood in specific socio-
historical contexts. Furthermore, John Cawelti suggests ‘the reading and criticism of
both individual texts and of genres is part of a larger process, the ongoing development of
culture’ (1985, 60).
Expanding on Cawelti, Jason Mittell (2004) argues that the relationship of a text with
the larger corpus of genre happens through production and reception practices, which
should be understood in the contexts of larger social narratives that he identifies as
‘discursive practices’ (2004: 173) within the structural logic of what Michel Foucault
calls ‘discursive formations’ (1972: 38). In this sense, the universe that integrates the
‘discursive practices’ is nurtured by the conceptions and expectations of different social
groups in which you can find network executives, creative teams (producers, directors,
writers, talent, etc.), marketing and advertising professionals, critics, scholars, audiences
and fans. Mittell suggests that ‘instead of typical questions of definition or interpretation,
we should foreground questions of cultural process in our attempts to analyze media
genres’ (2004: 175). In this sense, the genre or format, beyond their diegetic composi-
tion, should be understood as a social construction, in which hierarchies of taste operates
(Bourdieu, 2010), and which have historically work as a matrix of hierarchies of identity
such as class, gender, race, age, sexual orientation or nationality (Newman and Levine,
2012). Mittell argues that television genres are important because they work as ‘cultural
categories’ (2004: 177) which guide, organised and give meaning to a set of televisual
practices from the participant different social groups
Following these notions of genre in the context of the new digital media landscape, it
is important to think about the way that audiences consume content offered by the media
institutions, the way that this affects the dynamics of storytelling, and the rules of the
genre. But equally important is to look at how media institutions, critics and scholars talk
about these genres. Today, when young people are abandoning traditional routines of
watching television and the networks are looking for any programming strategy to retain
them, the institutional discourse under which programmes are ‘named’ or ‘label’ through
specific characteristic such as production values and genre is constructed with implicit
social and cultural hierarchies.

Telenovela literature and the evolution of the genre

‘As a type of televisual serial narrative’, Ana Lopez argues that ‘the Latin American
telenovela participate in the shared history that gave rise to other serial narrative
models such as the US soap opera’ (1995: 258). Cuban radionovelas and the visual
grammar and acting of the teleteatros shaped Telenovelas as distinctive genre. It was
the change from a weekly format to an everyday Monday to Friday prime-time format
that ‘signaled the passage from teleteatro to a telenovelas format’ (Hamburger, 2005:
29). This televisual serial narrative has a continuing narrative structure, in which the
208 Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 14(2)

story told in every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, triggering the audience’s desire to
find out what will happen in the next chapter. The management of the audience’s
expectation is structured through a Monday to Friday daily viewership dynamic.
Melodrama functions as the engine of the plot and narrative devices, and character
development enhances the storytelling process. What differentiates telenovelas from
soap operas is that telenovelas ‘have always had clear-cut stories with definitive
endings that permit narrative closure’ but also ‘telenovelas are prime-time entertain-
ment for all audiences’ (Lopez, 1995: 258). The close-ending structure of telenovelas
is built on a central plot, around which many other subplots can be arranged, but all of
which should be subordinated to the main goal to be achieved or an obstacle to be
overcome, which signals the ending of story.
Tomás López-Pumarejo (1987) wrote the first critical study of telenovelas, influenced
by Robert Allen’s (1985) seminal work on soap operas. López-Pumarejo viewed tele-
novelas as a heavily feminised, commercialised, daytime television industrial product.
As Marı́a Mercedes Borkosky (2016) argues, this approach conceives the cosmology of
telenovelas primarily within a moral universe, in which the triumph of the good over evil
is based on the capacity of the leading female protagonist to navigate and move around
the playing field of feelings. Martı́n-Barbero and Muñoz (1992) analysed telenovelas not
as an exclusively feminised-commercialised industrial product but as a distinctive cul-
tural form, in which melodrama, the quintessential element of telenovelas, operates as a
cultural matrix inserted in Latin American sociocultural practices of the everyday life.
Martı́n-Barbero also argues that telenovelas produce the basis of a specific commu-
nicational contract tied to quotidian life, making them ‘a carnival, where actors, audi-
ences, and characters constantly interchange their positions. This interchange refers to
the confusion between what the viewers feel, an aesthetic experience of identity that is
open to and counts on the expectations and reactions of the public’ (1993: 23). This
process, argues Martı́n-Barbero, ‘might the product of profound dynamic of memories
and imaginaries. What actives these memories and makes them permeable to the modern
urban imaginaries . . . is the order of their cultural matrices’ (p. 23).
Martı́n-Barbero (1995) further argues that telenovelas have historically followed
production paradigms with very distinctive visual style, narrative construction and
character development. The first is the traditional telenovela model, based on the Cuban
radionovela, mostly adopted by Mexico, in which ‘heart-rending, tragic suffering,
predominates’ (p. 279). The second is a realistic telenovela model, prompted by the
production of the Brazilian telenovela Beto Rockefeller (1968). ‘This model’, argues
Martı́n-Barbero, ‘without completely breaking with the melodramatic one, incorporates
a realism which permits the ‘situating’ of the narrative in everyday life as well as within
specifically national reality’ (1995: 280). The many divergent iterations of these two
primal models, across the different countries in the region, have produced a more
complex and varied storytelling scenario, in which the increasing diversity of narrative
formulas are linked to very different national and idiosyncratic expressions and evolu-
tions of the genre. Furthermore, the incorporation of different subgenres in telenovela
plot development, arguably as a response to increasing competition in the rise of cable
television in the 1990s, grounded the surge of a new telenovela paradigm called
Piñón 209

Postmodern or Baroque telenovela (Steinberg, 1997). In the Postmodern telenovela,

‘narrative series are multiplied (several tales happen in parallel, and in some moments is
difficult to establish the predominance of who is going to prevail in the narrative) and the
scene is occupied by different references genres mixtures’ (Steinberg, 1997: 22). In this
new modality, the melodrama of telenovelas is mixed with comedy, action thriller,
musicals and documentary elements that seem to dislocate the genre. While telenovelas
do have an array of iterations across the region with clear moments of disruptions, many
of them changing the trajectories of entire national industries, the production of tele-
novelas as a particular televisual commodity arguably contain general elements that
prevent them from fully becoming something else. That is exactly the claim that the
industry is making around the rise of super series: that they are something else than
telenovelas. I will identify some elements that are shared characteristics of the tele-
novelas as a genre, as possible site of analysis and comparison. Telenovelas present the
following characteristics: (a) they are fictional serials, (b) they are based on melodrama,
(c) they offer a close-ending narrative structure, (d) they provide a central plot and a
variety of subordinated subplots, (e) they are broadcast daily – mostly Monday to Friday,
(f) because of time demands, they not always afford the highest production values, and
(g) romance is usually a key element in the plot. The disruption of some of these ele-
ments may situate a televisual production in a hybrid position while still making the case
of its telenovela lineage. However, as I just pointed out, the decision of what genre is, or
not, does not rely solely on rigid characteristics but comes from the participants in the
industry, producers, institutions, critics, audiences and scholars. The purpose of my
research is to see how the very producers of the telenovela genre and the super series
perceive them and talk about them as a site of possible genre perceived evolution or
change.
As a key strategy to change how the different participants, practitioners, critics and
audiences talk about their new televisual product, Telemundo used a marketing strategy
to reposition their successful prime-time fictional serials, from narconovelas as super
series, as highlighted in the interview conducted by Latina TV with Esperanza Garay,
Senior VP of Latin American Sales and Acquisitions Latin America for Telemundo
International. Garay points out that the super series strategies involve:

Taking a programming differentiation strategy from conventional and traditional teleno-

vela, and focusing on a different telenovela, with unique characteristics, with shorter dura-
tion, from 60 to 80 episodes. Second, the thematic, because of the time slot, allows us to
bring stronger and riskier plots, either thriller, action, or suspense with scenes that require
a greater production, bigger investments, and the best talent. (TV Latina, 2015)

That year, NBCUniversal Hispanic Group launched an audiovisual campaign titled,

‘Telemundo super series: not your average telenovela’, in which the genre differentiation
with telenovelas was categorised as ‘daring characters, amazing stories, incredible pro-
duction values, and seasons’ (NBCU, 2015). This marketing goal was underscored in
October 2017, by Luis Silberman Telemundo’s President, whose interview with Variety
reported that ‘we have begun by changing our prime time, our ten o’clock slot and by
210 Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 14(2)

introducing super series which are not novelas, but shorter and come in multiple seasons.
We pulled away from telenovelas’ (Hopewell and De Pablos, 2017).
The success achieved by Telemundo with the premiere of La Reina del Sur in 2011
(then conceived as a narconovela), and replicated by El Senor de los Cielos in 2013,
found its most important moment in terms of genre disruption when it was announced
that El Señor would have a second season (Maglio, 2013). This decision marked the rise
of the new television fictional serials label as super series that so far included six suc-
cessful seasons of El Señor de los Cielos, four seasons of La Señora Acero (2014–) and
three season of Sin Senos Sı́ Hay Paraiso (2016–), as the most visible representatives of
the new hybrid genre. The strategy paid off, as super series took over slowly but
increasingly in the ratings within their time slots, allowing Telemundo to claim the first
place in prime-time ratings for the first time in the second half of 2016, and the entirety
of 2017 in the 18–49 demographic (Piñón, 2018).

The impact of a changing digital media landscape on audience’s

consumption routines
The new digital media landscape has brought incredible challenges and opportunities
to the industry as the executives grapple with this new media ecology. Informal and
formal conversations with high rank executives in Telemundo and Televisa offer a
glimpse of an ‘institutional discourse’ building a message of new paths of opportunity
for the television networks, based new opportunities of content distribution in which
OTT platforms can extend the life of the networks’ programming, as exemplified by
the signed contracts for original programming of Televisa with Amazon, and Tele-
mundo with Netflix. However, the executives recognised the dramatic changes in
audiences’ media consumption. A Telemundo executive argues ‘the research shows
that audiences do not always watch television content at the time that is broadcast . . . ’
‘and yes, they are watching our content but in many cases under their own timing and
conditions’ (Executive Telemundo. Personal Communication, 9 July 2018, Miami
Florida). Similarly, a Televisa executive states ‘audiences are watching more content
than ever’, but also ‘people are watching content in many platforms and at unusual
times . . . this has lowered the average television everyday viewing, from the times in
which there was no competition, for people when they have only the telenovela’
(Executive Televisa. Personal Communication, 13 August 2018, Mexico City). Along
this line, an independent screenwriter with long experience on telenovela production
asserts ‘this new generation of millennials have not the same span attention that adults
used to have, and they now have the need of immediate gratification . . . they consume
the products quickly, and they do it in an addictive matter’ (Independent Screenwriters,
Phone Communication, 6 February 2019, Mexico City). The Televisa executive con-
tinues arguing that: ‘by impacting audiences’ routines of consumption, you realise that
people have more options, and people fall in love with characters, and they want to
know more, so this triggers binge watching’ (Executive Televisa. Personal Commu-
nication, 13 August 2018, Mexico City). These are the very logics pushing television
networks to innovate, to create different content, with higher production values, shorter
Piñón 211

episodes and instant gratification to compete in the new digital environment, while at
the same time keeping traditional formats intact, which respond to the demand of the
daily television schedules. In the following sections, I will put forward a set of dis-
ruptive practices or characteristic of super series, as described by TV executives and
writers, to better situate how they are different from telenovelas as well as a set of
characteristics that anchor super series to the telenovela genre. The very people who
make production and broadcast decisions and set the agenda about how to talk about
them describe all these practices.

Telemundo’s super series: The case of El Señor de los Cielos

Disruption
The transformation and changing face of telenovelas can be characterised through the
different points of disruption where new televisual texts are departing from the standard
melodramatic moral universe, the traditional narrative structure and the kind of themes,
production values and format associated with the telenovelas.

 The disruption of the hegemonic position of the traditional romantic telenovela

story.

The most successful telenovelas in the US Hispanic prime-time market have

focused on the love story, and their various iterations, but as a Telemundo Producer
argues ‘the love story has been moved to a back seat on the (newer) stories’ (Executive
Telemundo. Personal Communication, 10 July 2018, Miami Florida). More specifi-
cally, what is now absent, in super series, is the central plot in which the main hetero-
sexual couple needs to go through a series of obstacles, challenges and incredible
twists that prevent them from being together, only to be resolved with a happy ending
in the last episodes as the couple is finally reunited. As a result of this disruption,
another classic element of the telenovela narrative under question is the specific trope
of the Cinderella story. Not only is the romantic couple being decentred, but the role of
women in telenovelas is being challenged. The idea that the poor, innocent, virginal
young woman is going to be rescued by the wealthy, honest, well-intentioned young
man is no longer the rule. This is what has been described as ‘Social Darwinism’ (Fer-
nández and Paxman, 2001: 95), as part of the traditional telenovela plot, in which the
only option for women climbing the social ladder is marriage to a wealthy man.
Women are now depicted with a lot more agency than before, including their re-
positioning as professionals in charge of their own economic destiny. Leading teleno-
vela women are not depicted as weak, helpless, passive victims anymore. Super series,
in particular, position women in a different light. In many cases, the leading female
protagonist has sexual agency, more active roles and entrepreneurial drive in various
professional occupations including positions of power in criminal settings, although
this is not always the case with their supporting female characters.
212 Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 14(2)

 The disruption of the melodramatic moral universe.

Another key departure from traditional telenovelas is the absence of a defined moral
universe in which the plot provides a scenario for the battle between good and evil. The
traditional telenovela dichotomy is expressed through the characters (the good and the
bad) and the kind of relationships that they have. In super series, there is no clear line
between good and evil. The traditional character positioning is turned upside down, as
the screenwriter of El Señor de los Cielos points out, ‘the leading characters are the bad
guys, they inhabit the world of evil, and the ones that are part of the world of justice are
the antagonists’. The screenwriter describes the leading characters as ‘being in between
the bad and the worse’, he continues ‘ . . . because we are making action-oriented stories,
very dynamic stories, in which we do not need to take care of the honesty or virtues of
the leading characters, what you ought to do if this were a telenovela’ (Screenwriter
El Señor. Personal Communication, 9 July 2018, Miami Florida). Building a moral uni-
verse relies on the use of characters as types or stereotypes, with clear divisions between
the goods and the evils, and super series show a more complex universe of characters
with equally complex interests. It is a new universe where the protagonists are antiheroes
with no clear moral values.

 The masculinisation of the genre.

One of the main factors in the success of La Reina del Sur is that it drew a large
young-male audience, and this was not an isolated event. The audience demographics
of narconovelas broadcast in the US Hispanic television networks show high male view-
ership, in contrast to traditional romantic telenovelas (Piñón, 2018). The masculinisation
of the genre through the social problem-oriented theme brought this hybrid new genre
into the public sphere. Even in the case of La Reina del Sur or Señora Acero in which
a female character takes the lead, the women operate in a male-gendered environment.
Because one of the reasons for these changes in narrative strategy is to attract male audi-
ences, male characters have taken a centre stage on these new action packed plot itera-
tions of telenovelas as super series as is the case of El Señor de los Cielos. This is clearly
not an anomaly, as narconovelas such as El Capo (2009–2014), Pablo Escobar El
Patrón del Mal (2012) or Perseguidos (2016–) have all had a male character as the centre
of the narrative. But what is important here is that due to the demand of new fictional,
male-oriented, action-oriented, suspense thrillers, a ‘social problem’ perspective is tak-
ing over the narratives of these hybrid shows. Stories of law enforcement, crime, migra-
tion, money laundering, traffic, mafia and gang-like themes are increasingly present.
A producer with Argos Productions argues that with the masculinised world of drug deal-
ers, ‘we are trying to represent this world, a misogynous world’; she continues ‘even
though Telemundo and its writer want to show more empowered women on the screen,
but when women are immersed in this world, in reality they have really few options’
(Executive Argos. Personal Communication, 7 August 2017, Tlanepantla, State of Mex-
ico, Mexico). These shows are in stark contrast with traditional telenovelas in which
women are the leading characters and the real engines of the plot.
Piñón 213

 Sense of reality, a sense of historical document.

El Señor de los Cielos was loosely based on the life of Amado Carrillo, the famous
Mexican drug dealer, renamed Aurelio Casillas in the narconovela. The stories, the char-
acters and the situations presented in the plot of the first season were all anchored in his-
toric events and real people. The narconovela played with real life events and real people
in the political, social and economic circles of Mexico, Colombia and the United States.
While still fictional, Aurelio touched a chord with audiences. As one of the Argos pro-
ducer argues:
I think that we were going deep in something that it was happening in the contemporaneous
Mexican history, for instance, the story of the peasants who started to work with drug deal-
ers because they did not have anywhere to sell their products.

‘Argos Productions has a revolutionary DNA,’ continues the producer ‘with a critical
point of view; and when we start emphasising it, I do think people can see it, people start
hearing in the words of our fictional characters, how people really think’ (Executive
Argos. Personal Communication, 7 August 2017, Tlanepantla, State of Mexico, Mex-
ico). The Argos executive discusses how telenovelas like Nada Personal (1996) and
Demasiado Corazón (1997) were direct predecessors of El Señor de los Cielos in their
criticism of the connection between criminal activities and the political establishment.
From the first season, set in the 1990s, El Señor has introduced to the audience all the
main contemporary Mexican political figures over three decades. In particular, the fierce
critique focused on the 57th President of Mexico, Ernesto Peña Nieto (2012–2018), reso-
nated strongly with audiences tired of the high levels of corruption in the political sys-
tem. The super series portrayed the President as a cold criminal, lured by lust, sex and
drugs, and the fictional plot revolves around real events in contemporary Mexican life.
Using fiction to mirror reality was done masterfully by the Venezuelan telenovela, Por
Estas Calles in 1992, but in the case of El Señor de los Cielos totally fictional interac-
tions, situated in the context of real events, functioned as a vehicle to deliver a harsh
commentary against the deep sense of degradation of Mexican social and political rea-
lities. The Argos Producer recalls that Rafael Amaya, the actor portraying the fictional
character Aurelio Casillas:
understood perfectly the text, and he started delivering a sense of deepness to what he was
saying. There were things that he was saying that seemed to me very dangerous because
they had a great degree of truth, and that is the moment in which the people started loving
to El Señor de los Cielos, and they are not supposed to love him. (Executive Argos. Personal
Communication, 7 August 2017, Tlanepantla, State of Mexico, Mexico).

 On narrative temporal structure.

Super series explore a different narrative sequence. There are narrative irruptions, dis-
orientation and breaking common telenovela continuity as ways to maintain audiences’
attention. Mittell (2006) has made the case of ‘narrative complexity’, and the use of
214 Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 14(2)

different strategies of disorientation, to make audiences think by disrupting common

rigid structure of seriality and series. Following that strategy, the super series became
a possible route of change. A Telemundo Producer argues that super series sometimes
break with this common structure:

[Characters] end in a particular situation one day, and the next day the chapter starts in a
different situation . . . (This) can confuse the audience, it is a matter of routines, but people
start to understand that some things are linked.

He continues:

sometime you can think: When did that happen? And suddenly at the end of the chapter or in
the next the story is narrated through a flashback. This is a narrative structure that come
from weekly serial drama, and we have been experimenting a little bit with the audiences
in this sense. (Executive Telemundo. Personal Communication, 9 July 2018, Miami Florida)

 On the amount of episodes and plot arcs.

Super series have responded to audience preference for fewer episodes. Historically,
the number of chapters of telenovelas has varied, usually running from 120 episodes to as
many as 200, or even more if the telenovela is very successful. Executives, producers and
writers all agree that in the new digital landscape, audiences are impatient and prefer
stories that have condensed viewing experiences. At the same time, the move to fewer
episodes is also well suited to digital platforms. Following the steps of Sin Tetas no Hay
Paraı́so (2006), a Columbian narconovela with only 21 episodes, Telemundo paired
with RTI Colombia on La Diosa Coronada (2010) with 31 episodes, but it did not pro-
duce the expected results. It was the success of La Reina del Sur with 63 episodes that set
the mark for number of episodes. El Señor de los Cielos had 74 episodes in the first sea-
son. Telemundo increased the order to 80 or even 90 in the next seasons, but the digital
reality and increasingly competitive digital landscape means the network are commis-
sioning fewer episodes. This applies not only to super series but also to the new format
called premium series with only 10 to 12 episodes broadcast daily.

 The disruption of the close-end final and the creation of number of seasons.

The creation of seasons for super series is one of the most important departures from
the telenovela mode of production. Successful telenovelas grew in number of episodes,
up to several hundreds, but have no seasons. Reporter Tony Maglio’s article, ‘Tele-
mundo orders second season of novella, in big break from tradition’, describes how the
order of a second season for El Señor de los Cielos was unprecedented business. As he
puts it, ‘telenovelas are not built to return for additional seasons. They generally run five
nights a week for 100 to 120 episodes’ (Maglio, 2013). Joshua Mintz, then VP executive
president of scripted programming and general manager of Telemundo Studios, touted
that ‘for the first time in our history, we are leveraging the best of the novella genre, with
the frequency of the general market drama series’ (Maglio, 2013). This was a clear break
Piñón 215

with the past for US Hispanic television, but it was already an industry practice for
narconovelas in the Colombian television industry. Fox Telecolombia and TV Caracol
have already set in motion a season strategy for their most successful narconovelas such
as El Capo, 1,2 3, and El Cartel de los Sapos 1, 2 (2008–).
However, before the disruption that narconovelas triggered, telenovelas had sequels
in other countries, particularly in specific subgenres such as youth novelas or children
novelas. However, as independent screenwriter argues: ‘in the telenovela context we
never talked about seasons. It was possible to make them larger, if the telenovela had a
really great success the rare possibility was to make a second part’ (Independent
Screenwriters, Phone Communication, 6 February 2019, Mexico City). Very successful
telenovelas have had second parts, such as the youth novella, Floricienta (2004), but the
second part was not considered a second season. This is important because the first and
the second parts had endings that offered plot resolutions, while seasons do not do this.
The possibility of adding seasons to super series has broken the original telenovela
contract with audiences, in which they, assumingly, were going to see their expectations
satisfied with the resolution of the plot. The absence of resolution takes away the genre’s
capacity to restore the moral universe at the end, which had been a key component of the
moral lesson of the traditional telenovela. As Adriana Estill argues, ‘(T)he final closure
of the telenovela creates a permanent, stable world where “complete” individuals win or
lose and the audience can participate in that completion. The closure that a telenovela
provides essentially confirms the worldview – the wholeness – always already present’
(2001: 174). In contrast, and in order to keep the suspense and the possibilities to growth
the narrative through another seasons, the super series format has an open-ended finale.
With this narrative imperative for an established order, where the good guys are awarded
and bad guys penalised is gone. There is no moral lesson, something central in melo-
drama, particularly in the traditional telenovela model.
The creation of seasons, in the context of a digital environment, increases followers in
digital spaces and creates a franchise commodity with transmedia possibilities. As the
writer of El Señor de los Cielos remembers:

we have good results in ratings, and access to the boom generated by VOD, also there were
some content production made for Facebook and social media, around the story, and we had,
at the beginning of the fourth season, 8 million followers in Facebook. In that moment we
realised this is a monster, this is big, what we have here is actually a franchise. (Screenwriter
El Señor. Personal Communication, 9 July 2018, Miami Florida).

As Dennise Man argues, the making of a programme into a franchise is the imperative
of the new media environment: ‘It’s not TV, it’s brand management TV’ (2009). The
creation of a franchise out of a television programme, and in particular a fictional series,
creates a level of fandom and digital interactions that can turn a show into a money mak-
ing machine. But it also requires, as Mann suggests, a different labour relationship and
management with the project. The multiple seasons of a successful super series also
aligns more closely with the idea of a series in the mainstream American television
context.
216 Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 14(2)

 Higher production values.

The fast-paced, action-packed, social problem-oriented narratives also require a cer-

tain level of cinematic quality and production values. This allows the shows to deliver a
certain level of realism, while also allowing them to be marketed as high-quality televi-
sion commodities. ‘This is not a telenovela’ asserts the screenwriter of El Seños de los
Cielos. ‘We have high production values, because super series are a new television genre
that has not become strictly an action-oriented story – still is not there yet – but we do not
want to be stuck in telenovela dynamics’ (Screenwriter El Señor. Personal Communica-
tion, 9 July 2018, Miami Florida). A narrative shaped by a fast-paced rhythm, dialogue,
action, editing and locations, with the purpose of appealing to young, male audiences, is
replacing the traditional telenovela mode of production based on long dialogue, indoor-
based scenes and environments mostly filmed in the studio. As a result, there is a strong
element of location filming, which has also been linked to the cinematic properties more
aligned with the concept of quality TV. To produce the landmark narconovela La Reina
del Sur, Telemundo sought a coproduction scheme with Caracol TV, Antena 3 and the
participation of Argos in the production process. At the time, La Reina was heralded as
Telemundo’s most expensive production. With sets in different countries, different con-
tinents, a lot of locations in exteriors, beautiful landscapes as well as seascapes, and the
use of action-oriented storytelling that required boats, helicopters, jets, cars and so on, La
Reina established a high-quality and dynamic tone. El Señor de los Cielos followed that
path. Telemundo promoted the show as ‘not your average telenovela’ and touted their
‘incredible production values’. All executives, producers, screenwriters agreed that
super series offered a different standard on production values, their cinematic values,
alongside with the action-oriented sequences. The Argos producers cited the amount
of special effects required in the different sequences of El Senor de los Cielos as a clear
element that appeals audiences.

Continuity
Continuity in super series is rooted in the longstanding dynamics of production/reception
and storytelling strategies of prime-time Spanish-language television. The broadcasting
of super series on a daily basis produces a key connection with audiences, which in many
cases underscores the very conditions of continuity that has allowed them to rise in
visibility as daily, still melodrama-oriented, serial.

 Melodrama is still the overarching matrix.

Melodrama and its tricks still govern many of the resolutions on super series, creating
a range of verisimilitude from which the leading anti-hero characters can emerge trium-
phant. The suspense is built on unexpected twists, reminiscent of melodramatic narrative
devices. Furthermore, family relations and loyalty still play a key role in the develop-
ment of the super series. As the screenwriter of El Señor de los Cielos clarifies:
Piñón 217

we have characters that are mostly action-oriented but I wanted to keep the spirit of a tele-
novela here. That is why when it comes to talk about my premises I write, ‘this is the bases
on which Los Narcos Tambien Lloran refers to the highly transnationally famous Mexican
telenovela, Los Ricos Tambien Lloran [Rich people also cry] . . . in El Sen˜or you can see
how a narco thinks, how a narco lives, and how a narco suffers’. (Screenwriter El Señor.
Personal Communication, 9 July 2018, Miami Florida)

 Kinship and family relations still at the core of the narrative universe.

Not only are familial ties the basis for relationships between individual characters in
El Señor, but relations between different families also act as the foundation for more
complex relationships linked to different sets of law enforcement or crime-related busi-
nesses, where loyalty, revenge, secrets and betrayal are also rampant. Family and busi-
ness have been heavily intertwined in the plot development of El Señor. Familial
relationships, and their varied interactions, take centre stage with the narrative participa-
tion of the different members of the Casillas family. The drug traffic business is most of
the times a family business. ‘Alba, Aurelio Casillas’ mother, while not involved directly
in the business, has both a matriarchal a primordial role’, says the screenwriter of El
Señor (Screenwriter El Señor. Personal Communication, 9 July 2018, Miami Florida).
She is described as a key ethical point of reference in the context of the broken moral
universe of the family business. In El Señor, ‘love-relationships happen when they
coincide with business interests’ argues a Telemundo executive (Executive Telemundo.
Personal Communication, 9 July 2018, Miami Florida).

 The daily routines for viewership.

Super series are scheduled in the programming grid the same as telenovelas. Super
series are serials scheduled for prime-time slots for everyday from Monday through
Friday. This is the key and crucial format element that structures and defines telenovela
production, the narrative devices, and the relationship with audiences’ everyday lives
and expectations. While the narrative keeps the pace of the everyday life for the most
part, characters do not remember a time past, you experience the past across the many
episodes broadcast. So, the confusion between reality and fiction coming from an every-
day routine is a key feature of audiences’ experiences that is also reproduced by super
series. Super series also rely on the same ‘Star System’ of talent that nurtures the tele-
novela industry. When asked what she thought about super series, to the Producer from
Bravo Productions, replied that she simply defines them as ‘short telenovelas’.

Conclusions
The new digital media ecology is forcing practitioners within the television industry,
particularly broadcasting networks, to rework the long-standing telenovela serial format.
This is in response to new audiences’ routines of consumption, but also to make them
more viable to their new afterlife in digital platforms of delivery. Increasing audiences’
218 Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 14(2)

migration to digital platforms is changing the positioning of broadcasting prime-time

schedule as the only window of delivery. Broadcasts now coexist with digital source
of video delivery offering different logics of time and space availability.
The changing media landscape has produced within the television industry practi-
tioners a sense of opportunity as well as a sense of urgency. Producing certainty is one of
the most valuable tools for executives ‘discursive practices’ in the context of an industry
that been characterised by Richard Caves (2005) under the ‘nobody knows’ rule, based
on the unpredictability of success of television programmes (p. 5). In that process, the
conceptualisation of a new televisual product in a changing industrial context needs to be
seen as an effort to reflect a spirit on innovation and anchor discourse of success around
particular commodities, producing at the same time certainty and guidelines of what lies
ahead as content strategy.
The current transformations are not only reflected in a corresponding urge for
innovation in televisual products, but also a realignment in which television broadcasting
networks are producing content for newly hegemonic OTT providers such as Netflix or
Amazon. Broadcasters are adjusting their own televisual formats in a way that can flow
dynamically in one or the other platform, in different temporalities of distribution.
Telemundo, Univision and Televisa have signed production contracts with the major
digital video streaming services Netflix and Amazon. These particular production
agreements have been mostly based on the idea of producing dramatic series with high
production values, small amount of episodes, controversial and bold narratives, and
largely different from other daily serial melodrama.
The position of broadcasting networks, in the pursuing of fictional dramatic series
with an afterlife in digital platforms, is already having an effect on the dynamics of
production in prime-time television. A new line of televisual products, which Telemundo
calls premium series, offers high production values, with a series-like number of epi-
sodes (10 to 12) but scheduled on an everyday routine similar to telenovelas. The pre-
mium series, titled The Inmate (El Recluso), was released on September 25 of 2018 and
ran for 2 weeks. The production of The Inmate not only signals a new stage of quality
production in Spanish-language television but a change in the traditional industrial mode
of production based mostly in the logics of a diet of daily telenovelas. In January 2019,
Telemundo premiered Jugar con Fuego (Playing with fire), a 10 episodes drama
scheduled daily over 2 weeks. This new production strategy marries the idea of a series’
production with the quotidian routines of the everyday telenovela broadcast. This is not a
change that should be taken lightly.
Constant transformation and accommodation are core features for the success and
growth of telenovelas. This is reflected in the very distinctive iterations in different
countries, with diverse narrative strategies, the incorporation of various subgenre,
themes and character development under the overarching umbrella of melodrama. It is
also important to underscore the capacity of the genre for innovation while retaining
traditional strategies. Martı́n-Barbero argues ‘The success of the Latin American tele-
novela exists to a large degree in making an archaic narrative [ . . . ] the shelter of
modernizing proposals of some aspects of life’ (1992: 71).
Piñón 219

Symbolically, super series pursue a new process of modernisation in production

values, strategies of storytelling and narrative approaches to characters and themes while
rekindling long-felt popular culture elements about family relations love, and success.
As Mittell (2004) suggests, the idea of a television genre is engineered in the context of
‘discursive practice’ where a variety of social groups intervene. The television industry
has set in motion a campaign that underscores the features and different qualities brought
about by super series. We will have to wait to see how these new hybrids carve out their
own distinctive places in audiences’ imagination and if the distinctive genre’s expec-
tations offer a route for recognition.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.

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Author biography
Juan Piñón is an associate professor at the Media, Culture and Communication Department at
New York University. His research focuses on the intersection of Latin American transnational
media corporate dynamics with the established mode of production of US Latino media. As the
US coordinator of the Ibero-American Television Fiction Observatory (OBITEL) since 2009, he
has published on a yearly based a book chapter on the state of the art of the US Hispanic Television
industry. He has published multiple book chapters in different media anthologies and in a range of
journals such as Television and New Media, Global Media and Communication, International
Journal of Cultural Studies and Communication Theory.