Marcos Santana

Marcos Santana (born 1965) is the current president of NBCUniversal Telemundo Internacional. He previously served as president and chief operating officer of Tepuy International, a television distribution company he founded in 1989. Telemundo acquired Tepuy’s assets in late 2006, creating Telemundo Internacional and installing Santana as its president in early 2007. Santana is a current member of the Board of Telemundo and board for TVN Panama.

Early life and education

Santana was born in Caracas, Venezuela, to an economist and a homemaker. He is the youngest of five brothers. He holds a law degree and a master's degree in copyright.

Career

Santana is the founding president of Telemundo Internacional, the division with headquarters in the United States that is responsible for the commercialization and distribution of Telemundo and NBC UNIVERSO’s original content, as well as that of other top producers. During Santana’s tenure as president, the company has become the second largest worldwide distributor of Spanish-language programming in the world with programs airing in more than 120 countries, and pay TV channels in almost 80 countries. Telemundo’s financial turnaround is mainly due to the decision to produce its own novelas, realities and series in the U.S., a factor credited to Santana’s influence.

Tepuy International

Santana began his career in the legal department of French telecommunications company Sofretu. In 1987, he co-founded the production and distribution company Tepuy International to sell formats, cartoons, series and telenovelas and other Spanish-language content in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. Tepuy International began making and distributing documentaries and animated shows, but soon branched into telenovelas. The company found a niche between larger distributors like Televisa and TV Globo to bring Hispanic shows, mostly telenovelas, to the European market. An early success was Santana’s obtaining the distribution rights in 1993 to several popular Colombian telenovelas from RTI Colombia, Coestrellas, Jes, Caracol and selling them in Europe, Asia, Africa and other parts of South America. In 1994, Tepuy with office’s in Caracas, Madrid and Roma moved its headquarters to South Florida, eventually settling in Miami, a main hub of Hispanic television in the United States. Tepuy entered the market at the beginning of the boom in telenovelas and influenced the increasing sophistication of the genre produced by smaller independents by internationalizing the casts and accents and increasing production quality. In its first decade, Tepuy became a mainstay of the telenovela industry, successfully selling the traditionally Latin American product worldwide. The company also successfully pitched remakes of telenovelas, such as Mirada de Mujer, a 1997 Mexican remake of a 1990 Venezuelan storyline. As head of Tepuy, Santana was active in the hands-on creation and selection of many successful television projects with companies such as Telemundo-NBC, RTI, Disney, Sony, Caracol TV, Argos, Endemol, Gestmusic, Imagina, Televen, and Televisión Nacional de Chile, among others. He created and executed numerous co-production agreements with some of the most prestigious companies in the global television market, setting new industry standards. Tepuy’s successful collaboration with RTI Colombia led to the company becoming Telemundo’s internacional distribution partner. In 2005, Santana was approached by Telemundo president Don Browne to head program development at Telemundo Studios in Miami. In 2006, Telemundo bought Tepuy and brought the entire company in-house as Telemundo Internacional, with Santana named president in January 2007.

NBCU -Telemundo Internacional

As President of NBCU-Telemundo Internacional, Santana is charged with overseeing all of the network's content distribution efforts, as well as the company's distribution services to other producers around the world, international co-productions and international partnerships. Santana is also involved in the network's development process for all program genres, including developing original concepts, procuring scripts, making casting decisions and assessing international distribution viability. He currently reports to Cesar Conde, Chairman, NBCUniversal International Group and NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises. Additionally, Santana is responsible for all commercial relations with Televisa, programming of Channel 9 Mexico (co-joint with Televisa) and supervision, management, programming and global strategy of Telemundo Internacional Pay TV channels, currently available in Latin America and the South African region with two signals: one in Spanish and one in Portuguese. Santana is intimately involved in the development of most of Telemundo’s original novelas including 2010’s El Clon, for which he had negotiated a partnership deal with Brazil’s Globo TV to allow Telemundo to do a remake of its original version. In 2015, Santana presided over a deal to make Telemundo Internacional exclusive distributor of HBO Latin America Originals in Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa and Oceania and an agreement with Mega Chile giving it exclusive rights for the distribution of the Chilean channel’s fiction programs and formats worldwide. In addition, Santana has been a longstanding and active member of the board of several important television networks in Latin America including Televen in Venezuela and TVN in Panama (Grupo Motta) and more than a dozen content production companies in the Region. Santana is a current member of the Board of NBCU Telemundo, of the Miami Symphony Orchestra (MISO), member of the G50, headed by Moises Naim, and member of the board for TVN Panama.

Throughout his career and until 2016, Santana has led commercial transactions for productions, co-productions and distribution content for TV and other media, that add up to over 2 billion dollars.

Accolades

• Santana was named among Adweek’s 2011 Most Influential Executives and Personalities in Hispanic Media.
• He was recognized as one of The Imagen Foundation’s Most Powerful & Influential Latinos in Entertainment in 2011 ,2012 and 2015. He was featured as one of the 100 Latinos Miami in 2012 as one of the most relevant executives in Media.
• After lobbying for 5 years with The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, he achieved the goal of creating a new category at the Emmy Awards for best Non-English Language U.S. Primetime Program, and in 2014 Telemundo won the first ever Emmy Award for Non-English Language US Primetime Program with the international production "El Señor de Los Cielos".

• John Consoli "Latin Influence: Meet the executives and icons shaping the massive, and growing, Hispanic media market" AdWeek June 28, 2011
• "Powerful & Influential Latinos in Entertainment – Imagen Foundation". Imagen.org. 2016-07-18. Retrieved 2016-08-24. 
• "Telemundo Internacional Celebrates 10 Years at Miptv" TodoTV. April 4, 2016

Personal life

Santana has lived in United States since 1994, is divorced, and has an 18-year-old daughter.