Telemundo Africa's Indefinite And Possibly Scrapped Programming Plans

Back in 2017, Telemundo International announced that the Turkish telenovela Örlene Kadar would make their way to viewer's screens in Latin America and Africa from a year later so far the series only made its way to Latin America.

This was Engin Akyürek comeback to acting after Kara Para Aşk. Ölene Kadar which was retitled into Hasta La Muerte (Until Death) with Akyürek taking up the lead role of Dr. Dağhan Soysür who was convicted for murdering a business tycoon Sezai Karali when he was a 24-year old medical-grad pursuing his specialization. Due to this false accusation, Dağhan lost his youth, his career, the woman he loved and his unborn child. 11 years later, Dağhan is called upon by a young lawyer Selvi Nardan (Fahriye Evcen Özçivit), who claims that she knows he is innocent and can prove in court that Dağhan never committed the murder for which he has served more than a decade in confinement.

Though the series had a strong theme and direction, and Akyürek's romantic pair with Fahriye was making waves internationally, the series failed to impress the local Turkish audience, and due to low ratings, the series had its finale at its 13th episode. It was produced by TIMS and written by Elif Usman anf Sevgi Yilmaz. The first four episodes were directed by Umur Turagay and the rest by Feride Kaytan in January 2017.

It's failure to attract it's viewers is not the cause for the delay or possible termination of the show in Africa. Even though the series shares similarities to Telemundo's El Rostro De La Venganza (The Face Of Destiny). It shows that Telemundo which is now flooded with repeats during the daytime is working on a way to reduce them or carefully go unnoticed. Eva, owned by AMC International has the long running American series, Bold And The Beautiful from CBS in its own slot with Mexican, Colombian and Argentine telenovelas filling up two or less slots.

Telemundo in the United States is also airing telenovelas produced not only produced in Mexico and Colombia but also Turkey, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia just to name a few. Even though they're being fed repeats to a lesser extent they're still dominating the market since that channel is also used for other entertainment unlike international markets.

There have been signs that Telemundo Africa is not only for Mexican and Colombian telenovelas. Back in 2017, the channel aired the Argentine telenovela Gavilanes which doesn't make sense to me at all since they brought Tierra De Reyes and both these shows are based on the 2003 telenovela, Pasíon De Gavilanes. Why not source out something different from that market.

Telemundo international also picked up the Kara Para Ask (Black Money Love) and Muhtesem Yüzyil (The Sultan) sometime ago and Latin America managed to air one of them so far. Which begs the question on what Telemundo Africa has planned once El Señor Del Los Cielos (Lord Of The Skies) and Sin Seños Si Hay Paraiso (The Way To Paradise) concludes. They'll more likely air biographies from their studios, El Chema, El Recluso and telenovelas from Imagen Television.

Their super series alone fill up most of the airtime now that most of them can't get above 100 episodes per season and Telemundo in Africa uses a 7 day a week format in a 2 hour timeslot. A series running in that pace can take up 3 months. Judging by this format it's possible that reruns will air in the premiere slot.

If you had to tally this channel's lineup I'd say they're more secure with daytime shows as opposed to night time. They are stronger in that area and are able to get newer programming on the daytime slot but the super series is the downfall. At the moment there's less to no repetition in that area but it's likely to occur in that area very soon and Telemundo will have to find a way out to keep viewers entertained if they hope to be around that long in Africa.

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