Jeff Valdez - Creator of a new type of network

By Eunice Sigler

Jeff Valdez has come a long way from the days in which he worried about staying warm and fed in the housing projects of Pueblo, Colorado. Now living in Beverly Hills, Valdez is the genius behind SíTV, the nation’s first and only English-language Latino television network—one that appears to be redefining the future of Hispanic media.

With less than two years on the air, the hip, irreverent programming on SíTV has racked up an unprecedented number of awards. In September, the network garnered five First Place wins in the Programmer Division of the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) Excellence in Multicultural Marketing Awards—the equivalent for cable and telecommunications marketers of an Oscar. SíTV also captured 19 wins at the PROMAX Awards, an annual competition put on worldwide by leaders in electronic media. But for Valdez, all this is just the beginning.

“The channel is 18 months old. It took us six years just to raise the money,” he says. Forget the finish line. All we did in those years was get to the starting point.”

It took that long because Valdez, although an industry leader in his own right, was bucking conventional wisdom. Throwing aside the firmly entrenched notion that the only way to reach Hispanics was in Spanish, Valdez approached advertisers and cable perators and made pitch after pitch for a TV channel that would feature content relevant to Latinos, but delivered entirely in English. For Valdez, who was born in the United States and speaks flawless English, it was a no- brainer. Not so for the rest of the industry.

Valdez in a studio at work“I had to educate people,” he says. “It was shocking some of the stuff I heard, like: ‘You’re kidding, Hispanics speak English?’ or ‘Don’t you people already have your own channels?’ ”

Eventually, he had heavy-hitter backers like Time Warner and EchoStar Communications, and gained enough capital to start the network. Moctesuma Esparza, the celebrated filmmaker/producer behind Selena, The Milagro Beanfield War and Gods and Generals, is one of the people who helped him get there.

“I had become familiar with Jeff and I had seen what he had done with comedy and the Latino Laugh Festival and The Brothers García. I was convinced that he was the right person to do it,” Esparza says. “Now with SíTV being on the air a little over a year-anda-half, my decision has been totally vindicated. He has done a tremendous job.”

SíTV offers much original programming catering to the 18-34 age group of second and third-generation Latinos, offering everything from music and sitcoms to dramatic series and reality shows.

Valdez started out as a comedian, then owned a comedy club in Colorado Springs for 11 years. Later, he created, hosted and produced the Los Angeles TV series Comedy Compadres, earning him the title “the Ed Sullivan of Latino talent.”

In 1996, he started the Latino Laugh Festival in San Antonio with investor Bruce Barshop, who later became his co-founder for SíTV. The star-studded event was soon picked up by Showtime, leading to more exposure for Valdez. Now a successful writer and producer, Valdez remains as down-to earth and simple as when he was a young man going on the road playing in bands and hanging out with band mates. One of them, by the way, worked at a TV station, which is where Valdez developed his love for TV production. After working for Tri-Star Television writing, creating and producing four network pilots, he decided to take a shot at his dream of portraying Hispanics differently in the media.

Via : www.hispaniconline.com

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