Avail-TVN, VeneMovies Forge VOD Deal

Partnership to bring Spanish-language movies to U.S. market

By David Tanklefsky -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/22/2009 2:33:07 PM

Independent digital media services company Avail-TVN announced Tuesday a long-term video-on-demand deal with VeneMovies, a commercial free channel that serves the U.S. Hispanic market with Spanish-language content.
 
“With Latinos in the U.S. spending approximately $19.7 billion on entertainment in 2008 and overall Latino purchasing power expected to hit $1 trillion, there is a great opportunity to serve the growing demand for quality Spanish-language entertainment,” said Jim Riley, chief revenue officer at Avail-TVN. “Working with VeneMovies On Demand is an important step in building our Spanish-language content offering.”
 
This month, the channel is offering a number of movies to coincide with Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15) including La Ley de Herodes, about a 1940s mayor in a small town in the Mexican desert; Sonar no Cuesta Nada, a dark comedy about Colombian soldiers; and Iluminados por el Fuego, about two young men sent to fight in the Falklands who return home after the war.
 
VeneMovies launched in 2006 and accesses the film library through Venevision International.  
 
Avail-TVN works with major studios and networks to offer a full content lineup of MPEG-4 encoded live programming as well as VOD content in MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 to multichannel video providers.