Multichannel network MiTu has signed a multiyear agreement with Mexico City-based giant Televisa that will see the two Hispanic-focused companies work together to develop and distribute programming across multiple platforms.
Exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Televisa is not investing in MiTu under the agreement, a Variety article said.
MiTu launched on YouTube in 2012 and clearly tapped a key segment of the U.S. population. Hispanic viewers are shifting to online video viewing faster than the national average, a March report by Nielsen found.
"While Hispanics account for 47 million of the traditional TV viewers in the U.S., they're increasingly spending time watching video on digital devices, having added two more hours on average of online and mobile video viewing since 2011," the 2014 Digital Consumer Report said. "The average Latino spends more than eight hours viewing online videos each month, which is more than 1.5 hours longer than the U.S. average in Q3 2013."
A May study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that 43 percent of Hispanics surveyed streamed video on their tablets or smartphones, compared with 25 percent of the overall U.S. population.
MiTu has grown exponentially along with the explosion in popularity of the MCN format. The company bills itself as the biggest and fastest-growing Latino-focused MCN and has nearly 43 million subscribers watching 1,300 of its partner channels.
The MCN has been on a growth path for several months now. In December, MiTu and Univision announced a content deal under which MiTu would develop Spanish-language short-form content. The videos are distributed via Univision's digital platforms, such as UVideos.
A January licensing deal with AOL gave the provider the ability to distribute MiTu's content across all of its properties.
In June, the MCN raised $10 million from a group of investors that included Upfront Ventures and the Chernin Group--money that will go toward building up its infrastructure, including production facilities in Los Angeles and Mexico City.
For more:
- Variety has this story
- MediaPost has this story
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