In the following interview with ttvnews, the executive discusses his appointment and the steps he will take to continue the strategy forged by Mar Martinez-Raposo, prioritizing the consolidation of the pay TV business and the expansion of the Atresplayer platform.
Produced by Luis Cabrera and Ana Paula Carreira, from Miami
This Thursday, January 22, Atresmedia Internacional announced the replacement of its director, Mar Martínez-Raposo, after three decades at the helm.
The group also revealed that Orestes Aja, previously responsible for Digital & Streaming, will assume the directorship to continue the area’s strategy, with a special emphasis on consolidating pay TV channels and expanding Atresplayer.
As head of the Digital & Streaming area until now, Aja has been a key figure in the growth of the direct-to-consumer model and in the integration of the Atresplayer platform with some twenty international partners, such as Claro Video, Amazon Channels, Roku, and YouTube TV, as well as other major operators in Latin America and the US. His profile combines strategic vision, commercial management, and cross-functional team coordination, with a focus on sustainable growth and support for Spanish-language audiovisual content.
To learn firsthand about this transition period and the objectives he has set for his new role and the coming year, ttvnews spoke with the executive in Miami during the current edition of Content Americas.
How will this change be for you and the group, with this new role you are taking on, replacing Mar Martínez-Raposo?
We are going to do it in a calm, organic, and orderly way; as I believe, and as my management and Mar also think it should be done. This is a small business with very personal relationships. And clearly, a change in the leadership of Atresmedia Internacional has to be built from the ground up.
It’s something we’ve been working on for some time now, and we’ll have Mar’s support for a few months. She’ll gradually be relinquishing those responsibilities, delegating those skills to me and the team she’s left her in top form, well-trained and with an impeccable track record.
Furthermore, I want to highlight Mar’s work, as she experienced the entire expansion of Atresmedia’s portfolio. Mar has truly been a pioneer in the internationalization of Spanish television throughout Latin America. She achieved incredible things with the rise of cable television; she was able to open up the market, enter with Antena 3 Internacional, and then grow it with other channels.
Speaking of pay TV, what has 2025 been like for the group in terms of growth?
We have a solid distribution network with linear channels, and in that sense -despite the uncertainty and the current situation in the cable and pay TV sector- we believe there is a certain stabilization that has allowed us to renew all our agreements. We have not only renewed the main agreements with our pay TV clients, but we have also renewed our agreements with our representatives in our two key markets: the United States and Latin America.
In that sense, we believe the business is in a strong position. For us, the pay TV business is in a solid position with the renewed agreements and the presence of the Antena 3, Atreseries, Hola TV, and Atrescine brands on the main operators in all these countries.
Another important part of the business, which falls under your responsibility, is streaming and the Atresplayer platform…
Atresplayer is key to our strategy of continued growth and expanding our distribution capacity at Atresmedia International. Atresplayer has become not a replacement for television channels, but rather an added value to them. In other words, it’s the streaming service of the Atresmedia group: it has a strategic ambition and project in Spain, and we’ve transformed that project with a global focus to reach the entire Spanish-speaking market.
It’s a streaming platform that offers the best of Spanish series and programs from anywhere in the world. Obviously, the main market is Latin America, where we have a large audience that speaks the same language.
Therefore, Atresplayer has become, on the one hand, strategic for renewing and strengthening distribution agreements with cable operators who are interested in offering, as if it were a fifth channel in our franchise, the streaming service to their customers in different formats, through direct on-demand subscriptions or in hard bundles added to other streaming services. There are many possibilities there.
And then with Atresplayer, what we’re doing is integrating and adding the service to partners like Amazon Channels, or now Roku, which has been the big launch this year. We’re very pleased to have formalized that agreement at the end of last year, and we’re seeing a great response both in Mexico and the United States, where we’ve also been included by Roku to meet the high demand for Spanish-language content from the US Hispanic market.
Looking ahead, what would a successful 2026 look like for you?
For 2026, our goal regarding pay TV is to continue what we’ve been doing. That is, despite the current situation in the sector, our position is to support operators and continue distributing and providing them with our television channels, including Antena 3, which has a strengthened programming lineup with formats that are audience leaders in Spain and perform very well in all Latin American countries. Entertainment formats like The Voice; El Hormiguero, fresh content; the telenovela Sueños de Libertad, which has a daily schedule that encourages viewers to tune in to the channel every day…
So, for 2026, the business objective remains to renew existing agreements and leverage Atresplayer as that added value so that operators feel they have the opportunity to offer their clients this streaming service as part of a larger commercial agreement.
And in terms of production?
Regarding TV content, basically, we have major formats that are already established on the schedule and will continue to be this year. I’m talking about all the news programming, the telenovela, The Voice, Sueños de Libertad, we’re currently working on El Desafío, and we’re moving forward with our agreement with Globo Brazil. Therefore, the programming schedule will always have several new offerings throughout the year with the leading Brazilian producer and the Globo brand behind it. We also recently announced that we have strengthened the channel’s programming by announcing a major primetime premiere each month.
And then, regarding content for the streaming platform, on the one hand, it draws on everything that happens on linear channels, which shows that all that programming ends up in the aggregated repository of on-demand content. And we also have the originals, which are first-window series that premiere exclusively on Atresplayer.
You’ve also made a commitment to vertical content with Una novia por navidad
It was the first vertical series we produced in Spain; we made it ourselves, we premiered it internationally, it was exclusive to Atresplayer, and the result has been positive. I think there’s a clear trend, and we’re going to continue producing vertical series on Atresplayer.
