May 27, 2008

ONE YEAR LATER: THE CLOSING OF RCTV

One year later:
  • We're still mourning.
  • We still have one eye closed.
  • We lost the mechanism of internal competition, essential to the evolution of Venezuelan TV.
  • Nobody watches the government network TVES.
  • The job sources for actors, producers, directors and technical crew members have been severely diminished.
  • Writers in RCTV are adapting classic works or remaking old telenovelas.
  • Writers in Venevisión are being directed to write for an "universal" market, not for Venezuelans. This international market seems to like telenovelas made in Miami, and those produced by Televisa and Telemundo. 
  • Telefutura has a say in the casts of RCTV telenovelas, but then moves those same productions to humiliating slots in its schedule.
  • Actors have seen their few work sources invaded by political polarization.
  • In a modern twist of the witch hunts, some Venezuelans decided to judge actors and writers not by their talent, but by their workplace. 
  • The wound hasn't healed. It's a wound in our freedom of expression, a hole in our remote control, and in our Venezuelan essence.

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