TELENOVELA BLOCK.pages 24 - 30: - Discop

telenovela block
DAILY INSTANT ROMANCE TELENOVELAS IN
HUNGARY
By Erika Kocsor
Hungarian television channels have
been broadcasting a plenty of
telenovelas for years. Romantica is,
however, “the only channel dedicated
to love” which appeared in Hungary. If
you look at the programme schedule
of the bigger or smaller channels,
whether commercial or public service
ones, everyone broadcasts a couple of
daily romantic soap operas. Most of
them are produced by Latin-American
production companies.
The Hungarian television market
is based on the competition among
the two national commercial channels
(RTL Klub, TV2), the terrestrial channel
of MTV, and the Hungarian public
service television (m1), although there
are numerous cable TV companies in
the country as well. If you compare the
figures of RTL Klub and TV2, they are
now running almost side by side having
an average 30-32% share among the
viewers aged 18-49, compared with
m1, which owns only 10%.
TV2 has been reaching the viewing
rates of its main competitors in the
last few years, and recently, at weekends,
even it has beaten RTL Klub. In
order to be able to strengthen its market
position during the weekdays as
well, TV2 decided to produce its own
daily telenovela, being envious of the
success of the BARATOK KOZT
(AMONG FRIENDS), RTL Klub’s soap
opera, which has been running on the
channel from 1999 on weekdays in
prime time, showing a standard 37-
40% share among the most demanding
viewers from the commercial
aspect.
Gabor Kereszty, Director-General
at TV2, and Andras Svaby, Managing
Director of Interaktiv-Fiction department,
which produces JOBAN ROS -
SZBAN (FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE)
emphasise that the brand-new soap
opera is not a licence programme, but
genuine Hungarian one, from conceiving
the idea till its realization. The
Hungarian viewers can easily become
one with its situations and characters;
for better, for worse, as in real life. The
producers chose a subject which has
already made a conquest of the audience’s
heart many times. The handsome
chief surgeon, coming home
from the States wants to set an example
for the Hungarian public health, by
establishing an ideal hospital. The
story is full of intriguing doctors, good
and ill tempered patients, faithful and
fickle women, danger, and, of course,
love. The series began on January 23,
2005. It is on TV2 at 7 pm from
Mondays to Fridays.
Tamas Kalamar, the producer of
AMONG FRIENDS (BARATOK KOZT),
an 8-year old telenovela run on RTL
Klub, can be really proud of his child.
He says, “The main reason of its success
is that AMONG FRIENDS stands
close to ordinary people, and it represents
different minorities of the society
as well.
The Hungarian soap opera is
about a group of friends who spent
their childhood together in a big house
25 years ago. One day one of their fellows,
the founder and leader of
Berenyi Building and Construction Ltd.
dies in a car accident, but nobody
knows exactly how. The tragedy
changes the lives of everyone. The
friends took over the enterprise,
changing the old building, where they
were once children, into a modern
apartment house. They live their
everyday lives in friendship, intrigue
and love like all the other characters in
all the other telenovelas in the world.
As for MTV, the Hungarian public
service television is concerned about
the fact that they have not produced
their own soap opera yet, and that
they do not expect to do so in the near
future either. In 2004, MTV launched
a new series titled ELETKEPEK
(GENRE PICTURES), which is on m1 on
every second Tuesday in prime time,
with a psychiatrists’ talk show coming
right after it.
It resembles the SZOMSZEDOK
(NEIGHBOURS), the popular telenovela
of the late eighties and nineties,
but it is no wonder, because its writerdirector
is the same, Adam Horvath.
In 1987, when NEIGHBOURS began,
the genre was considered absolutely
new. With its mild social criticism,
many commonplaces, charming ordinary-looking
characters living in blocks
of flats in a socialistic housing estate,
it was one of the most watched telly
programmes on MTV, every two
weeks up until 1999. Partly because
of a kind of its retro feeling and partly
to have its “daily MTV telenovela”, m1
started broadcasting it again at 6:50
pm, Mondays to Fridays.
The new GENRE PICTURES is taking
place in a contemporary garden
quarter and it is about a drama of two
families, whose fates intermingle
when a widow journalist’s son falls in
love with a wealthy dentist’s daughter…
There is, however, a brand-new
weekly youth telenovela on m1, which
started at the end of 2005. The director
of the series, Vera Takacs says
that the point of interest of the KLIP-
PEREK (CLIPPERS) is how the story of
the film is happening in the 25 minutes
of the programme itself. It is on at
10.40 am on Saturdays; the story
covers 2 sisters (aged 23 and 13) and
a brother (aged 17) living without
parental control, because their mom
had to leave to England because of her
job. According to the surveys and the
messages of the young viewers on the
website and blogs, there is finally a
fashionable and popular youth series
on MTV; the audience of the public
service television, however, still has to
wait for a daily telenovela with flesh
and blood characters and a real
human story, or at least a cup of daily
instant romance. }
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discop link 03 www.discop.com march 2006