Reglocalization and the rise of the network cities media system in producing telenovelas for hemispheric audiences

Abstract

In the context of a new economy and the new international cultural division of labor, we must recognize emerging globalization processes, triggered by the rise of a network cities media system in telenovela production comprising by the axis of Miami, Bogota, Mexico. This system has created an economic-socio-cultural production template I term reglocalization within the Spanish-language television industry. Reglocalization is a process through which Latinidad is re-crafted for regional/global consumption, through notions of traveling narratives, multinational settings, and multicultural castings, and transnational co-production agreements in which local entities produce a hybrid version of the region that includes a commodified production of a hemispheric Latinidad for global consumption.

Netflix in Mexico: An Example of the Tech Giant’s Transnational Business Strategies

“…Their main markets were Ibero-american countries and the US. In that context, Mexico City along with Miami and Bogotá had consolidated their role as hubs of Hispanic/Latino audiovisual production with a global reach (see Piñón 2014). Similarly, Pay television (Pay-TV) had been continuously growing, subscribers kept rising across the country.…”

10. Complex Labor Relations in Latin American Television Industries

“…La reina del sur featured a transnational flow of characters with a drug trafficking narrative that was filmed in Bogota, Mexico City, Miami, and Melilla, Spain, with production teams in each location, a strategy I call "reglocalization, " based on a "network cities system of production. " 36 La reina del sur proved to be one of the most successful telenovelas in recent memory for Telemundo. Later, El señor de los cielos (2013), a new coproduction of Telemundo with Colombia's Caracol TV and the collaboration of Argos, became the second most popular production in Telemundo's history, only surpassed by La reina.…”

Spanish-language immigrant media in Miami-Dade County, Florida: Discursive arenas for transnational civil societies

“…Soruco () and Resnick () both examined media catering to Cubans; others have examined communications aimed at a growing Haitian population (Walker, ; Hughes, Colon, Wakhisi, & Santiague, ). More broadly, Miami as a geography has been theorized by researchers as an important setting in media production (Yúdice, 2003), providing a decontextualized geography suitable for homogenized pan‐Latin American settings, a “reglocalization” of place that allows for hemispheric consumption of non‐region specific content (Piñon, ). Placed within this setting, the immigrant outlets in question, given both their sites of production and their intended audiences, can be thought of as having a direct connection with Miami as both an objective, physical space, but also as a more subjective, imagined geography that is shaped both by its specific surroundings, but also as a crossroads of international economic, political, and cultural flows.…”