Comcast and Venevision International—a member of the Cisneros Group of Companies and the largest Spanish-language film distributor and producer in the world— announced that the VeneMovies channel has launched on Comcast cable systems.
As the first full-featured Spanish-language film channel ever offered in the United States, the new 24-hour, commercial-free, cable channel is aimed at serving the needs of the more than 40 million Hispanics living in the United States. Comcast will add VeneMovies to its CableLatino Hispanic programming package, currently offered in more than 15 markets across the country, including Miami, the San Francisco Bay area, central California, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, central and northern New Jersey and Albuquerque.
The target audience is U.S.-Hispanic households, both Spanish dominant and bi-cultural, as well as all lovers of great independent film. VeneMovies will add English subtitles for all of its movies in the coming weeks as well as 20 hours of video-on-demand programming a month to the Comcast ON DEMAND en español service.
According to Venevision International, U.S. Hispanics are the fastest-growing U.S. consumer market, attending film openings (17% of all tickets sold) and watching more movies, DVDs and rental movies per year than any other segment of the U.S. population.
"Comcast is excited to work with Venevision International to make this powerful and compelling film library available to U.S. Latinos for the first time with a brilliant new channel that fully exploits and develops this library's considerable riches," said David Jensen Vice President of Content Acquisition for Comcast. "We think VeneMovies will quickly find an enthusiastic and lasting audience for whom great Spanish-original, theatrically released films will complement the lineup of programming that tells their stories on today's television screens."
VeneMovies premiers on Comcast this week and will soon be offered by other major cable TV providers in selected markets throughout the country.
Read more about this new Comcast channel in the press release Cisneros Group's Venevision International Launches on Comcast 'VeneMovies': America's First Full-Featured U.S.-Hispanic Cable Movie Channel.
