1	Into the Wind Alejandro Fernández, El Potrillo, rides back into the limelight with his new album and tour. read more...
2	The Wild Bunch Inspired by their heritage and emboldened by their spirits, these four poets, musicians and artists are taking tradition in a whole new direction. read more...
3	Ones to Watch Though George Lopez has left prime time, there are many new faces to watch for as TV’s fall season heats up. read more...
4	The Raconteur José Rivera made a name for himself on the Great White Way, but when Hollywood called, he answered with The Motorcycle Diaries and now with his gritty drama, Trade. read more...
5	Human Trafficking Thousands of young women are smuggled into the U.S. every year and sold into an underworld of prostitution and slavery. read more...
6	The Matchmaker NBC wiz kid Ben Silverman is bringing some of Spanish TV’s best to an English-language tube near you. read more...

Television

the Match Maker
Wunderkind producer Ben Silverman has made a name for himself bringing some of the most successful television franchises to American audiences.
Now he’s counting on Hispanics and their creative talents to return a
slumping NBC back to its glory days.

By Joe Contreras

Since his appointment as co-chairman of NBC Universal’s entertainment division and television studio last May, Ben Silverman has been dubbed the Rock Star Chairman, a moniker that reflects his relative youth, aversion to neckties and boyish good looks. But The King Midas of Television might be a better handle for the 37-year-old Silverman. As a whiz-kid talent agent who joined the William Morris Agency in the mid-1990s, Silverman packaged over 25 television series and was instrumental in bringing British reality shows like the mega-hit game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Survivor to American screens. He launched his own independent production and distribution company, Reveille, in 2002 and developed reality series for network and cable channels like NBC’s The Biggest Loser and the USA Network’s Nashville Star.
But as his track record at William Morris foreshadowed, Silverman has really made his mark in Hollywood by spotting foreign programming that could be adapted to American audiences. It was Reveille that purchased the format rights to the BBC hit program The Office in 2002 and sold the idea to NBC, and Silverman followed up that success with a true breakthrough for Latin American television—the purchase of U.S. rights to the hugely popular Colombian telenovela Yo Soy Betty, La Fea, which has become one of ABC’s highest-rated programs since making its stateside debut in the fall of 2006 as Ugly Betty.
The NBC inherited by Silverman finished dead last in the prime-time ratings among the big four networks for the past three consecutive seasons. It was telling that Silverman’s first major move in his new job was the acquisition of U.S. rights to Sin Tetas No Hay Paraíso (Without Breasts There is No Paradise), another blockbuster Colombian soap opera, this one about a teenaged girl who sees breast implants as her best way to escape a life of poverty.
The son of an avant-garde chamber music composer and a television executive, Silverman was exposed to Latinos at an early age as a kid growing up in Manhattan. In one of his first press interviews since taking over the reins at NBC, Silverman spoke with Hispanic about the lure of Latin culture, his plans for working with the NBC-owned Telemundo network and his own limited fluency in Spanish.

Hispanic Magazine: When did you hear about Sin Tetas No Hay Paraíso and what about it caught your eye?
Ben Silverman: I heard about the show right when it debuted in Colombia [in September 2006]. I’m always looking all over the world for new ideas and I read some articles about it. It was [generating] a lot of noise because of the content.

HM: The title is obviously going to leap from the TV listings of every U.S. newspaper.
BS: I really liked the title, but the [show’s] execution was great. I really thought it was well done, and we have some really excited writers who are pitching us takes to adapt and make it American. Colombia to me is one of the most creative countries in the world. It’s a little bit almost like the Hollywood of South America. I look to that market a lot for ideas.

HM: How do you account for the fact that a country like Colombia, which has so many problems, can produce so much artistic talent?
BS: Just like the 1930s in America produced some of the greatest entertainment ever, Colombia has reacted to issues that it has faced through the escapism of entertainment. Both Betty La Fea and Sin Tetas deal with huge issues of corruption that exist within that country.
HM: There are plans to do a Spanish-language edition of Sin Tetas for Telemundo with different actors and different scripts. Might this become a model for other adaptations in the future?
BS: I would love to bring some of the great Latin talent we have on Telemundo into some of our shows on NBC. As I chase down ideas to acquire, I’m also going to make sure that my sister network is also aware of them so that if NBC and Telemundo are jointly acquiring something, we won’t be scheduling against each other.

HM: Any worries about getting flak from the Moral Majority-types who squealed over Janet Jackson’s bared breast during the Super Bowl halftime show?
BS: The Colombian version [of Sin Tetas] deals with drugs, prostitution and a lot of areas that we’re going to have to decide how we touch upon. But we live in a culture where the beauty of somebody is measured in a kind of sexualized way many times, and the power that comes with sexuality can be used to achieve a greater status in life. I would just say to judge us on the content, not on the title.
HM: How soon might the first episode air?
BS: It’s something that could be on as soon as the spring.

HM: How did you become aware of Latino culture growing up in New York?
BS: In the “barrio” of Central Park West on the Upper West Side I was surrounded by many friends from many different cultures. My father moved to [the Manhattan neighborhood of] Washington Heights with a huge Dominican population and used to do interpretive classical music informed by samba, salsa and the other Latin music he fell in love with. I’ve always had a big cultural orientation toward the Latin world. I am a huge fan of the Latin community and a champion for their creativity.

HM: What will be your strategy to capture the Hispanic audience for NBC?
BS: In life you want to see yourself represented, and the first move is to start getting more Latinos on our air. We have an incredible asset with Telemundo, so the [challenge] is how do you service both platforms and tap into an audience that loves popular culture and is watching television voraciously. What will drive that is the good shows and the good ideas.
HM: When you acquired the rights to Betty La Fea in 2002, were you following in another producer’s footsteps?
BS: I don’t know what else had been out there, but at the time I did that I was not aware of any others going on.

HM: How’s your Spanish?
BS: It’s terrible, and I wish it was better (laughs). I have to see DVD’s [of Spanish-language programs] that are subtitled or dubbed. But let me be clear: if I can’t understand it without understanding the language, then I’m probably not going to buy it. All you have to do is watch the main titles of Sin Tetas to understand where it was going with the story. All you had to do with Ugly Betty was look at that image of that girl with the braces and the pigtails.