ABSTRACT
An article in Variety describing the growth of the Venezuelan TV network Radio Caracas was boldly titled “A Novel Rise to the Top;” the “novel” referring not to the novelty of the event, but to the fact that Radio Caracas is a network built, literally, by its successful telenovelas (among others, the wildly popular and much exported Topacio and Cristal).1 Radio Caracas is hardly an isolated example. Throughout the continent, networks and TV-based conglomerates have been consolidated upon the popularity of telenovelas and continue to depend upon their commercial potential. In fact, the persistence and frequency of the telenovela genre is the most marked characteristic of Latin American and Spanish-language television as a whole. Whether nationally produced or imported from other Latin American countries, telenovelas are the basic staple of all Latin American TV programming (day-and prime-time), of Spanish-language programming in the US, and, to a lesser degree, of TV programming in Spain.
