Programming
As it was in the case of radio programming, television schedules responded to the structure of people’s daily lives. Since the drama programs were targeted primordially to women, the novelas’ schedule was organized around the work day. In Mexico, for instance, the ‘telenovela’ slots were conveniently programmed in the late morning or early afternoon–sort of a break for women who worked at home–in addition to early evening drama shows.
The most significant development would be the evolution of telenovelas as a ‘prime-time’ format. By the late 1950s, in countries like Venezuela, they were already exhibited for the largest audiences, as late as 8 or 9 pm. The ‘horário nobre’ [‘noble’ time] as it is called in Brazil, would be devoted to telenovelas–a well deserved time to relax for an ever increasing urban population.
This ad features the content presented by Radio Caracas TV (Venezuela) at the beginning of the station’s regular broadcast. It includes the TV version of ‘Frijolito and Robustiana’, a very popular radio sketch comedy show. In the next few years, Radio Caracas TV became a leading producer of fictional content–including ‘Kaleidoscopio’, ‘Anecdotario’, and ‘Ciclorama’ among other anthology series, as well as telenovelas.
By 1957, the station’s programming was offered from 7:15 am to midnight. There were five daily time-slots devoted to telenovelas:
1:15 pm: Una novela Palmolive
6:45 pm: Una novela romántica
7:15 pm: Novela Único
9:00 pm: Novela Camay
9:15 pm: Novela LM
These were 15 min. programs, almost all of them named after their respective sponsors. They were one-offs or short-duration series, broadcast from Monday to Friday.
In addition to these ‘telenovelas’, the station also offered teleplays and anthology series:
Monday, 10:15: Teatro del Lunes
Tuesday, 9:30 pm: Ciclorama
Saturday, 9:30 pm: Teatro Ford
‘Tubazos’ is one of the specialized biweekly periodicals that were published in Venezuela in the 1950s. In the same decade, some TV stations, i.e. CMQ (Cuba), and Telesistema Mexicano (Mexico) had their own monthly promotional magazines.
