People To Meet: Fox’s Hernan Lopez

Hernan Lopez has risen through the ranks at Fox’s channels division and now oversees all of the basic and premium offerings in Latin America and the UK as well as online and business development across the group.

Lat-Am-based channels under his stewardship include Canal FOX, National Geographic Channel, FX, Fox Life, SPEED, Utilisima, Cinecanal and Movie City; as well as the production houses, Fox Toma 1 and Fox Telecolombia. FIC also now distributes some NBC Universal channels in Latin America.

At NATPE, Lopez will be speaking on the ‘International Channels: Planting the Flag and Building the Brand’ session and discussing FIC channels’ banner year, notably with the international launch of megahit zombie series The Walking Dead.

The show, based on the Robert Kirkman comics, was acquired internationally by FIC, which launched it on 120 of its international cable nets simultaneously. In the UK, on FX, the debut show recorded a million viewers and FIC said that, internationally, it has outperformed every other US cable series launched this year. In Argentina and Mexico it won its overall timeslot across all pay TV.

 “The single biggest achievement was the global launch of The Walking Dead,” Lopez says. “And the top strategic priority for 2011 is to increase our combined share of viewership in the highest-growth markets.”