Platforms are looking for their 'As if it were yesterday'

BarcelonaThe shift of the platforms towards conventional television has been a reality for almost a year. After becoming the driving forces of fiction, they saw that it was necessary to broaden their horizons. This is how they began to experiment with live broadcasts (this summer, for example, Max has offered the entire Olympic Games) and have incorporated formats such as Reality TV in their catalogues. Now, streaming services have set themselves another objective: to conquer the territory of daily series, fictions that have traditionally been broadcast during afternoon hours on conventional television and that are a product often – but not only – aimed at older viewers. In Catalonia it has been demonstrated that soap operas work well in digital windows: he As if it were yesterday It is often one of the most viewed content on 3Cat.

The first platform to launch into the production of its own daily series has been Disney+, which premiered the Spanish fiction on October 11 Return to Las Sabinas, starring Natalia Sánchez, Andrés Velencoso and Celia Freijeiro. On the day of the launch, the streaming service suddenly uploaded five episodes, but has subsequently released one chapter a day (the episode is available at 8:00 a.m.). Although it is a soap opera, the platform has already announced that it is a series with a closed ending and that, in total, it will have a single season of 70 episodes. ~BK_LINE_BREAK~ To carry out this challenge, Disney+ has teamed up with Diagonal TV, a production company with a lot of experience in this genre. Apart from having been behind great references of Catalan television fiction such as Labyrinth of shadows either Time of silence, in recent years has been in charge of the main afternoon series on Spanish television. His resume includes titles such as Loving in troubled times (inspired by Time of silence and broadcast on TVE) and its continuation, Loving stops forever (broadcast for 12 seasons on Antena 3); Shoulder strap, either The super, one of the first Spanish soap operas. Currently, Diagonal TV also produces Dreams of freedom, the afternoon fiction of Antena 3 that has replaced Loving stops forever. Curiously, the protagonist is the same as that of Return to Las Sabinas, Natalia Sánchez. ~BK_LINE_BREAK~ At the presentation of the Disney+ project at the Vitoria FesTVal, Sofía Fábregas, vice president of original production for the company in Spain, argued that it was a pioneering project. "It's a format that has been around for a long time, but never on a platform. It's a programming strategy that we started two years ago. Nobody was doing it, we asked ourselves why, and we did it," she explained. She also added that they have tried to change the "rules of the game" of the format by betting on shooting more outdoors and with more time. The goal is not only to reach the Spanish public but also to win over Latin American viewers by taking advantage of the global nature of Disney+. ~BK_LINE_BREAK~ Netflix is competing

The same day that Disney+ announced Return to Las Sabinas, Netflix tried to overshadow its rival platform by announcing that they would also have daily series. However, in their case, it is not a self-produced series but a collaboration. The streaming service has reached an agreement with RTVE and Bambú Producciones that allows it to offer the soap opera Wild Valley at the same rate of broadcast as La 1, which programs it every day from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The series premiered on September 11, almost a month before the arrival of Return to Las Sabinas, and in this way Netflix managed to overtake Disney+ as the first streaming platform to have a daily series. ~BK_LINE_BREAK~ As in the case of Disney+, Netflix's strategy is not so focused on the Spanish public (who can already watch the series live or through RTVE Play) as on the Spanish-speaking public around the world. At the time, the public corporation assured that "it is the biggest bet on a daily series that has ever been made in this country, with production values typical of a series of prime time".

Through the agreement with RTVE, Netflix has also incorporated into its catalogue another of the public corporation's daily series, The promise, which is broadcast every day at 5:30 p.m. The series is one of the most watched content on RTVE Play. However, as for Netflix, it does not offer it from the first episode: initially, it uploaded the last chapters and currently incorporates a daily chapter according to the broadcast rhythm of public television. Before making the jump to Netflix, The promise It could be seen in Latin America through HBO Max, a platform to which RTVE sold the rights.

The movements of Disney+ and Netflix indicate that daily series, which generally have many chapters and guarantee many hours of viewing, will be the new object of desire for the platforms.