Ronald Day, Billboard Spanish Executive of the Month for June 2024

Every last business day of the month, the team Billboard Spanish highlights an industry executive behind a big hit from the past four weeks, be it a single, album, tour or music event. This is our Executive of the Month for June 2024.

Name: Ronald Day
Title: President of entertainment and chief content officer of NBCUniversal Telemundo
Country of origin: Panama
Headquarters: Miami

Action field: Day leads the company’s content strategy with a focus on daily entertainment in collaboration with News and Sports. In addition to overseeing the network’s entertainment programming and reality shows, he also manages Telemundo Studios, directing the development and production of all fictional content for linear platforms and proprietary and third-party streaming platforms. In addition, Day ensures that content is available on all Telemundo platforms, including Universo and Peacock, as well as other direct-to-consumer media, under a coordinated, centralized and data-driven strategy, tailored to audience preferences and designed to adapt to each of Telemundo’s platforms throughout the portfolio.

Why he is our Executive of the Month: In its second annual edition, Billboard Latina Mujeres en la Música broke audience records on Telemundo on June 9. Marking a +541% increase over the 2023 show with 61 million interactions across television, digital, Peacock and social media, the two-hour special garnered a total of 109.6 million minutes of video viewed, a 20% increase. % compared to 2023. Likewise, the gala on Telemundo — in which Karol G, Gloria Estefan, Camila Cabello, Ana Bárbara, Ángela Aguilar, Kali Uchis, Kany García and La India were honored — was the most watched program on television in Spanish in the United States in its time slot from 9 to 11 at night, with an average of 192,000 adults aged 18 to 49 and 897,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen. Overall, the show outperformed Univision by +43% among adults 18-49 and +65% among total viewers. Additionally, the linear broadcast reached 1.5 million total viewers, a 14% increase over the previous year.

In your words, what was the biggest challenge of this edition of Billboard Latina Women in Music and how did you overcome it?

One of the biggest challenges was that last year the first edition was so beautiful and attracted a lot of attention, because as we know in Spanish there was no event dedicated to honoring the talent of women, and it was like a challenge of how we were going to do the second one.

I think that the success of this second edition, besides the ratings, which was like the culmination of this, was the quality of talent that was able to be brought together. Seeing Gloria Estefan sitting there with Emilio Estefan, seeing an India who had not appeared at special events for a while, singing with Sergio George on the piano. Camila Cabello herself giving these beautiful words to her mother. Ana Bárbara singing that medley at the beginning. I honestly think that there were many emotions throughout the event. It was really very nice, and it was done in a very cozy (cozy) but it looked like a first-class special event.

What do you think led to that viewership record?

The combination of the talents of the honorees, and of course the staging, which I also think was something super important. And the host [Jacky Bracamontes] that always gives it that elegance and also gives it that closeness to the viewer. I think that combination was perfect. And also the collaboration between Billboard and Telemundo, which we have been together for years as a family. I think that partnership (society) when we are in meetings, we say “what do you think of this?”, when we see that both parties applaud, it is a winning show.

What did you learn from this experience?

It is proven once again that music is in the DNA of us Latinos. And the fact that we made a second edition based on the success of the first confirms for us that this is the type of thing we have to do, continue continuing the legacy, first, of honoring women, who we know are generally not dedicated to them. entire show as it should be dedicated to them. And second, that music, as we know, is also a very important part for us at Telemundo, that what we always say is “we try to have music 365 days a year, not just two or three events.” And the partnership with Latin Billboard is wonderful because it gives us these opportunities to create more music content.

Since we were planning this second edition we had this passion and the entire special events production team was working on it. We are making sure that there is music on Telemundo all year round, and that also gives us tools to start supporting the new generation of music, those who are currently in the hit parade, and another important thing, also pay tribute to those who are already solidified. For example, you see artists on our reality shows. We have El Puma right now [José Luis Rodríguez] in the air [en Top Chef VIP 3]we had Lupillo [Rivera en la última temporada de La Casa de los Famosos]Music is a priority for us right now.

What can we expect from Billboard Latin Women in Music by 2025?

Believe it or not, already when we were watching the show on the air we were thinking: “How are we going to overcome that?” It is a big but good challenge, because we think that there are still many talented women in music. [por reconocer], so when the time comes to start producing and conceiving the third edition, we are going to feast. We are sure that, as always, we are going to do something much better and more relevant than this year.