After two years of absence due to the pandemic, today Thursday returns the Huaso de Olmue Festival the first major milestone for TVN ahead of its 2023 programming schedule, where the incursion and positioning of historical faces and a renewed NTV cultural focus stand out.
“Olmué is going to be the first massive televised festival to return after all this period of pandemic. Therefore, it has a symbol that extrapolates to TVN and the festival itself, ”he reflects in dialogue with BioBioChile the director of Programming of the public station, Roberto Cisternaswho took office last July.
For the audiovisual communicator, former Digital Director of Chilevisión and former Digital Manager of News & Sports in Chile (Warner Bros. Discovery), this is a challenge directly related to his professional past: for years, Cisternas stood out as a skillful director of video clips musicals.
“Starting in 2014, when TVN took over the Olmué festival, they came up with a very interesting format: rescuing the traditional, giving space to other content that has to do with folkloric roots, and opening up to new generations. That has been TVN’s great achievement since it took over Olmué. There is a clear model, but one cannot arrive and repeat names”, he comments on how this year’s poster was shaped.
In this regard, it highlights the participation of My Lafertewhich will debut tonight on an opening day that, according to Cisternas, reflects the cultural mix of the event.
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“The show that Mon will present in Olmué comes with flowery wind, an association of women singers from Oaxaca who have deep Mexican folkloric roots. and that is Zumbale Primo, it is not free. Today we recognize that several of our folkloric or traditional roots have to do with Mexico. If I could title it, Olmué’s first night is ‘Mexican-Chilean’, somehow. And someone, perhaps with little rural knowledge, could criticize that, but these two countries have a lot of links in their folkloric roots (…). We have a two-way artistic relationship with Mexico, and Olmué had never winked at him, ”he explains.
About the urban artists and the cumbia bands that will liven up the party in Patagual, such as Young Cister, La Rosa Y Red and La Combo Tortuga, among others, the director spares no praise: “Young Cister is the singer who is cutting the most tickets today, and he has a show that I think will demystify this vision of traditional urban music audiences, where you see a guy with a back sequence and an autotune playing. Young Cister is not that, he is a top-notch singer who has live instrumentalization, who has songs that transcend urban music ”.
“The Viña del Mar Festival is everything, it is something that Chile must take care of”
In addition to Olmué 2023, Cisternas is working in parallel on preparations for the Vina del Mar Festival, where he works “in production and strategic decisions, which makes me very proud.” For the filmmaker, it is a personal desire and a dream come true.
“I am super sincere: I do this because when I was a child I saw the Viña Festival. For me, the Viña del Mar Festival is everything, it is something that Chile must take care of, deeply. The weight is not taken into account, the importance of what it is, and the motivation it gives artists and producers to be able to make a path and crown it by getting there. For me, it has a giant connotation, it closes a cycle of my life, of fulfilling a dream. When I was in elementary school and they asked me: ‘I want to work at the Viña festival sometime,’ he replied, ‘and hopefully direct it.’ Unfortunately, I will not be able to switch it, which is what I would have loved, ”he jokes.
(Q): Your audiovisual career is closely related to popular music and the making of video clips and related materials. Will Chilean music have more space in this new stage of TVN?
(A): “I come from music, indeed, that is where my love and feelings for this industry are (…). We have made a path, alliances, with IAR for example, when we did the muse awards, where we began to accommodate (Chilean music) from the spaces that we can, and that also do not pose a risk to the culture of TVN. This is a way to be able to generate spaces, such as having music programs, which are very difficult to show today on open TV, because basically there is no muscle, there is no custom of having national music on open TV. We are going to go down that road, but we are taking the first sure steps to reactivate this link that TVN had with national music.
We are closing agreements to have the Pulsar Awardsback, and events that have nothing to do with national music, such as the transmission of the Music Bank, Korean music festival. We were in charge of the recording, and while Music Bank had a pretty bumpy production run in their operational production, at the end of the day what we wanted to do is have the production teams work with the teams from a Korean market 1.
(Q): Do you think the two canceled versions of the festival will weigh in Viña 2023? Has this been an impediment when working in the organization? In addition, it will be a different festival in many areas, without the gala, for example.
(R): The truth is that no, I have found a well-established team… I also include myself in the fact that there are new people who do not know the festival’s kitchen, unlike very experienced people. New people like me, like the municipality, like the mayoress, with whom we rescued a lot what the festival is, but we are understanding what is done and what is not done, and trying to contribute and involve with good work practices, to remove this frivolous image. , that you are not going to take it away 100%.
(Q): What were the guidelines that TVN followed when shaping its 2023 programming?
(A): When we talk about the grid, one puts his foot on the accelerator in some content and is a little more demure in others, to ensure the business and commercial model of TVN. But, mainly, if there is something that worries me and that today is the strategy at the channel level, it is taking care of the economic stability of the channel. No matter how much one has the ambition or the anxiety to generate a lot of content, like music, for example… What a desire to do a lot of music things. But mainly, and looking at the history of TVN in recent years, what must be taken care of is commercial efficiency, that investments are safe, and taking care of the work of the entire TVN team, which at some point was diminished. This is a channel that still has a giant operational endowment. In the other channels, most people services are outsourced.
It was my turn, with the same resources, to recover production, reactivate it, position ourselves again, but doing festivals, having the rights to the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games, and that eats up a lot of resources from the grid. So such a big innovation, like great stars, probably this year we will not have that type, but do believe me that we are going to have content that is convening and competitive, and look for strategic alliances, such as the series with CNTV. We are working with them… It is going to be a very strategic grill, to maintain the financial efficiency of the channel and thus be able to project ourselves to many more years.
“On TVN, in the nineties, there were programs that were country policies
How do you analyze the current competition in the morning slot of open TV? What have been the changes you have adopted in this regard?
(R): Look at how terrible it has been for the morning crews… Look at the morning crews in the last two years, which was to say, every morning, how many people had died. I saw it from my house and found it incredible; the emotional weight of those teams, having to work with entertainment, mixed with political contingency; It’s a very hard work…
The first thing I did was tell them: guys, we are going to take some time to get some air, we are going to lose space in the competition, and boy, did we lose it, and we said: we are going to work for March 2023, and we are going to see where we position ourselves And we hired Eduardo Fuentes, initially, for three things: his space at night, which is his space; I told him I was coming to the Olmué Festival and the matinee, but I never specified when to the matinee: he wanted me to join the team, to get to know each other, and when we were ready we would go on air.
(P): Three emblematic faces of TVN, Blanca Lewin, Ivette Vergara and Margot Kahl, return to the channel in this new stage. Was this an editorial decision for the channel?
(R): Yes, but first there are the attributes that each of the three has. In Margot’s case, she’s super important to my generation. She makes me laugh, but no media covers what Margot symbolizes for our generations. I saw “Good morning everyone” three times? But for my generation, Margot Kahl and Eric Goles are the ones who made our computer room, the computer room. Project Links. On TVN, in the nineties, there were programs that were political after the country. It was to create computer rooms, with internet, in public, subsidized schools. My room was called the Enlaces Room and there was a photo of Eric Goles and Margot Kahl outside. When I called Margot, and she didn’t want to go back to TV, I told her about this: “let’s forget about Providence”. I told him: “we don’t work for the people of Providencia, we work for the people of Tilcoco, Vallenar, Sydney. You are very important to those people. When you talk and see yourself, people watch TVN”.
Margot has an intangible connection to the audience. And she looks at how symbolic she was when she left, when TV took hold of this frivolity with show business… It was something that diminished us from having Margot Kahl on TV, and a lot of people and a lot of content. It was a statement of principle to bring Margot.