Yesterday a deal was announced between Univision and YouTube whereby the U.S. Hispanic network would bring a “hefty stable of short- and long-form programming to YouTube.” While this is “the first time any Univision programming is available on the Web outside of its own properties” a great deal of the network’s programming, particularly material from Televisa, has been illegally posted on YouTube. Back in February TubeMogul estimated that this content drawing was over double any other U.S. network.

Number of views of clips from the 10 most-pirated shows on each major network
Univision: 583,750,247*
Fox: 289,074,325
ABC: 260,299,418
CBS: 127,334,729
NBC: 120,890,835
Source: TubeMogul
*Includes Televisa content pirated from El Canal de las Estrellas

As I mentioned in a posting in February, Univision’s view count is mostly attributable to Televisa content, specifically material copied from El Canal de las Estrellas where their telenovelas air months ahead of Univision. Similar to how different regional premieres have encouraged piracy in the movie industry, pirated telenovela clips have flooded YouTube to the delight of thousands of fans.

The piracy seems to have gone on unabated in part because Televisa and Univsion are still wrangling over the digital broadcast rights of these telenovelas. This protracted battle is the focus of an excellent article today in Ad Age.

…perhaps because of the animus involved, Televisa simply ignored the fact that fans were uploading its telenovelas to YouTube… Televisa has become more aggressive about policing YouTube over the past year… The number of pirated clips of Televisa-produced Univision shows are down 53% since February, according to TubeMogul.

Even if the number of clips has been cut in half, plenty of Televisa’s content can still be seen on YouTube, something that would never be permitted by a Hollywood studio for an equivalent U.S. television series. A quick search of just recent Televisa telenovelas will yield dozens of clips that have each garnered over 100,000 views. Just the telenovela Sortilegio, which premiered in October on Univision, has garnered over 70 million views on YouTube. What’s worse, I also found a shady website called SortilegioTV.com where full episodes can be streamed for free, although a disclaimer below stipulates:

The streaming videos that has been found here are hosted by third party. Any copyrighted videos is a property of the original copyright holder. Therefore any violations, the owner of the blog is not liable.

While this is chaotic, at least it indicates that there is a tremendous amount of demand for Hispanic content online. Obviously, Univision’s decision to launch this new YouTube channel is an effort to consolidate its presence in this space, with or without Televisa telenovelas. In the meantime, perhaps Televisa can afford to let its content be pirated in YouTube since it probably won’t affect its business interests in Mexico where the company recently launched its own video portal, Tvolucion, similar in style and content to Hulu. Tvolucion seems to fullfill the wish of every telenovela fan, but only if they’re in Mexico. ‘Foreign’ viewers are notified that the material is not available in their market, although Tvolucion is “working on offering their catalog to a greater number of regions.” They are then invited to let Televisa know where they’re based.

It’s possible that Televisa is angling to have some sort of presence online in the U.S. market, thus bypassing their broadcast partner Univision and becoming a direct competitor within the online space. However it’s more probable that the two companies will compromise on an arrangement whereby Univision will gain the online rights for the telenovelas, with certain restrictions or windows in place, just as Hulu and Netflix have arranged with other content producers.

In any case this does makes me realize that eventually the U.S. Hispanic online market will be much more complex than what is currently seen in traditional media.