The Box: Guillermo Barraza Makes History As First Drag Queen To Host A Television Program In Mexico
SABC
Africa: South Africa’s public broadcaster, SABC, signed a partnership with BBC Studios in late March acquiring a batch of premium BBC content that will play out as a 2-hour primetime block on weeknights on SABC3 starting in May. Dubbed “BBC Primetime,” it will include award-winning British drama series, documentaries, lifestyle programming, and factual entertainment ranging from Top Gear to Death in Paradise. This comes as the SABC attempts to revive its ratings after changing popular television shows to different channels and times, causing a massive loss in viewership.
MultiChoice promoted and appointed Kemi Omotosho as its new regional director for Southern Africa after nearly five years of chaos surrounding the position. Numerous MultiChoice executives took on the role over the past half decade and vanished just as quickly as they were hired. Kemi Omotosho started at MultiChoice Nigeria in 2014 and has gone through a series of promotions until this year. She will now be responsible for looking after MultiChoice’s Southern Africa business.
Punit Goenka - Mint
Asia: Punit Goenka, CEO of Indian media conglomerate Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited, is cutting the organization’s workforce by 15% after an unsuccessful Sony merger. Goenka poses the dramatic change as an implementation of a “lean and streamlined management structure” to the Zee board, according to Variety. Earlier this week, Goenka had said that he would take a voluntary 20% reduction in his personal remuneration. In late March, Zee had cut its Technology & Innovation Centre by 50%. These reductions follow an unsuccessful merger with the Sony Group Corporation’s Indian unit in January.
Korean director Yeon Sang-ho’s latest Netflix series, Parasyte: The Grey, is a new story from the universe of the popular manga titled Parasyte by Hitoshi Iwaaki, which was published by Kodansha from 1989 to 1994. The six-episode thriller premiered on Netflix April 5, and stars Jeon So-nee, Koo Kyo-hwan, and Lee Jung-hyun.
Guillermo Barraza - Aurea Del Rosario
Latin America: Guillermo Barraza, a 32-year-old journalist, is making history as the first drag queen to host a news program for Mexican television. In Mexico, both LGBTQ+ people and journalists are violently targeted, especially this year, when one of the most prominent queer figures in the country was found dead after appearing on Barraza’s program. The show, La Verdrag, opens with a bold introduction, stating, “Welcome to La Verdrag, the program where minorities turn into a majority.” In a country where nearly 4 in every 5 people identify as Catholic, a 40-minute program highlighting violence against queer populations has made headlines to say the least. In addition to being one of the deadliest places to practice journalism in the world, Mexico has some of the highest rates of violence against LGBTQ+ communities in Latin America, a region where hate crimes and gender-based violence already run high. However when Barraza becomes Amanda, they take on a duty to break barriers for the next generation.
“Having an alter ego, you have fewer problems because they can’t harass a character. You have more freedom to speak out,” Barraza said. “There are many things that Guillermo wouldn’t do or say that Amanda wouldn’t think twice about.”
Diego Boneta is set to lead a new Prime Video bilingual series named El Gato, based on the comic book series El Gato Negro by Richard Dominguez. Production is anticipated to begin this spring in Mexico. In El Gato, Boneta will play Frank Guerrero, the black sheep of his family, who discovers his father was a notorious ‘70s vigilante. Frank returns home to Mexico after the death of his father and finds himself struggling to hold on to his father’s grand business empire. Eric Carrasco created the series and will executive produce along with Turi Meyer and Alfredo Septién.
