M h. Welcome to Strictly Business Varieties podcasts featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of entertainment. I'm Cynthia Littleton, business editor for Variety Today. My guest in New York is Jeff Baldez. Jeff has worked in the entertainment industry for thirty years. He's a comedian turned producer turned TV entrepreneur Remember See TV. Jeff launts that channel as a
true cable independent back in two thousand four. Jeff has been frustrated for years at the slow pace of inclusion for Latin X talent at all levels. After studying the issue, Jeff and three partners decided to tackle it head on as the mission of the newly launched New Cadence Production venture. In this interview, Jeff talks about what he sees as Hollywood supply chain problem and why corporate America needs to
take some radical steps to ensure its own future. Jeff Baldez, thank you so much for coming to talk with us. My pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. I know that you have recently been on an interesting tour of talking with very prominent industry leaders and entertainment about the persistent lack of meaningful participation of Latinos in the entertainment industry at all levels, in front of the camera, behind the camera, in the executive suites, in in decision
making processes. It's that you look at the numbers and it is just it's hard to believe that as a society we haven't we haven't advanced, and that we haven't
open doors. Clearly, two people, particularly people of Latino backgrounds, tell me about the information that you and some partners have gathered, and tell me about some of the things that you are bringing to corporate leaders in entertainment industry leaders and you're sitting down and talking to them about look at the numbers, look at the purchasing power of this of the Latino community in the United States. To talk us through some of the things that you're talking about,
and tell us about some of the responses that you're hearing. Um, you know, we we've had some really terrific meetings. I would tell you that in the past, I don't think that there was the receptivity to hearing things from uh, you know about this market, and that's changed, I think drastically recently. So we really and what we're doing is not a political You should do this because this is
the right thing. We're having our conversations about economics, and when you look at the economics of this market, you just can't continue to ignore it. It's a it's a massive market. We've been saying that for twenty years. Twenty years, you and I have had this conversation more than a hundred times. Right, but but but now and now you're literally you're talking about the the U. S. Latino not US Latino. First thing is people go Latino equals Spanish language,
and it does not. The U. S. Latino audience is thirty four compared to forty three. We knew that before, but US born is eighteen. So for the health of any company, you really have to be thinking about this young cohort. When I say cohort, also, I don't limit it to just the sixty million Latinos in the country. Is you know my family there were nine kids, seven married non Latinos. But the non Latinos in our family
are all culturally Latino. So you don't have to be have you know, have a last name to be a cultural Latino. Right, So I'm gonna make you a cultural Latino today's uh Cynthia. So we'll give you the name a sou. But but again it's explaining what we call the new Maine stream because when you look at in in a lot of major d M a s thirty three of the under thirty four audience in the top ten d M as is Latino. That's a real number.
And it's the seventh largest global economy two point one three trillion in g d P. There's some new studies coming out they're just really mind blowing as to the size of it. And there is a obviously a a complete lack of content um in particular in comedy. You know, we we look at the comedy opportunity as as the jumping off point uh Nielsen will you know Nielsen research tells us that you know, Latinos love comedy. Well, they're not seeing or hearing their cadence. Thus the name of
the company we started, new Cadence. We're trying to bring
a new cadence to the entertainment business. And what um, what the the information that you've gathered about purchasing power about you You've really broken it down into specifics of specific markets for everything for phones to insurance, policies to you know, and when you sit with people and they certainly recognize the power of this market, but what what what answers do you hear when we all ask the questions, why are there so few Latinos coming in the door
as creative talent, as executive recruits, are intern recruits that you know, that's to start that, to get that foot on the ladder, Like what what is the block at that point? Well, there's a couple. Number one. I always use the expression you can't change tires on the freeway, right. So you've got companies trying to just keep their business uh running in a time of great disruption, and you have companies that you know, because they're doing that, they
just they can't just stop and change course. Right. Uh that's that's a real big problem right there. And then uh, they're unable to hire the talent they need to go out and get it done. Because also it's a business of friends and people, you know, right, I live on the West Side and Beverly Hills, and I you know, my kids went to private school, so my circle of friends,
there is a level of trust there. But a lot of times I always joke that you know, people in the development industry in Los Angeles have never been east of Highland, right, so, you know, and and I and again, well intended people, but if you just don't get it, you don't get it. So you need to have the right people in place. Have you looked at all in
as part of this process. Have you looked at um efforts that have been done in the past to open doors, whether it's you know, mentoring programs or in the creative community, you know, workshops, you know, training programs to try to to try to bring people. Is there anything that is there anything that can work on the level of a of a of a proactive approach companies? Um? You know what, I think a lot of companies do things like that. UM.
And you know, in the name of diversity. And we talked before the interview about kind of diversity is kind of a weird thing these days, as you talk about it in a more holistic way, it's become a catch all term that has become a morpheus now and and and so you know, the the the intern programs and you know, the you know that type of stuff. UM, they yield some results, but the reality in this marketplace are actually really talented people ready to work, that are
capable of doing shows and getting things done. Uh. This true story. A couple of years ago, I was at a um AN event and there was a young lady that I knew there was used to be a showrunner on the show I did for Nickelodeon called Brother Scarcia. She was running the room the last year there, and prior to that she had run another room. And she was there at the young writer's table of this company, and I'm like, what are you doing here? Because it's the only way I can get in. I had to
literally sell myself off as a young writer. I was like, that's absurd. You shouldn't have to do that. So that's you know, in that they are good. There also needs to be an understanding of you know, there is talent ready to deploy right because speed to market is critical. I think Netflix has done an amazing job of speed to market and and and getting you know, content out there as opposed to what they call development hell that you know is a term in Hollywood, right, So it's manufacturing.
This is really simple manufacturing. And then the other problem, this is something actually I I we did some very deep research about the major studios in Hollywood because we were like, why is there a block in the supply chain? Because we and I think I mentioned this to you before, is so what we did is we built this index
and it's a really cool index. We went through every writer and director at every studio and we did their name, their age, their ethnicity, uh, their agency, their agents, how many clients the agent had, how many of those clients were a US Latino not foreign, right, because you know, an Argentinian is very different than somebody was born in Colorado. As I was, Uh, they're just their cultural experience. Uh there their first film ever, uh, their last film, uh,
their most recent film in their box office. So we built this index. We we found some very interesting things that validates some other stuff that's out there and went a little deeper. Is you know, uh the average ages, it's you know, like eighty five percent of the studios, about eighty five percent are male, of some cases ninety you're talking about filmmakers, filmmakers and TV TV shows and then you get into um of of those it's you know, there's seven tenths of one percent or Latino US Latino.
Because what happens they'll say, like Alfonso Cuadro and Guillermo del Toro. And I understand that people think that, but they're they're Mexican Mexicans. Like my wife's from Mexico City, she's a Mexican Mexican. I'm a Mexican American. There's a difference, but people just think, you know, Mexican, like kind of what Trump said the other day of all of the Mexican countries of Guatemala and hondurasm like, wow, really, so
even our president doesn't understand our countries. I know you're shocked. So um So, when we looked at that the supply chain in the very beginning, you have, um the all the studios use three agencies sell them their writers and directors. So in those studios there's seven tenths of one per cent of the writers and directors that are US US Latino, and amazingly, up at the top where the programming is,
it's about the same seven tenths. So when people say, well, we haven't done very well, we could do better, I very politely say, well, actually you can't. It's mathematically impossible for you to do better because you would have to change the whole not only you have to change all four tires on the car. So what we're proposing is going outside of the trade sational structure, and we have to in order to make this happen the traditional world
of of writers developed scripts. You know, writers start to get get some traction, they get an agent, they kind of get into the system, the pipeline of developed of you know, because we all know everything starts with the scripts. Um, and how would you how do you? How do you when you say go outside, do you mean more aggressive efforts to look for talent in untapped places to make people aware, even people aware at a young age that writing and producing and being an executive that these are
that these are even open to them. There there's, like I said, there's talent ready to go. Um. You know, I remember when we when we did the Brothers Garcia series for Nickelodeon, there were no real comedy writers out there. This is fifteen years ago, and I met folks. I read them and I said, you know you're you're you're capable.
I can read your script, tell your I can tell you're competent, and say with directors, we gave break Us to a dozen new writers and a dozen new directors on one show and so it's not about getting him in an intern programming spot, finding smart people and giving him the opportunity because everybody, I assume somebody probably met you one day I said, you know what, she's really smart and talented and I'm gonna give her her shot. Right. That just happens, and we need to do more that
And that doesn't mean that you know people. We we want, you know, to identify new talent and get him in the agencies so the agencies can diversify their they're they're offering and uh and also existing talent. There's a lot of really really terrific talent um And what is the we know, when you sit and talk do you do? Are you pressing people for a commitment for any kind of response? Are you trying trying to Is this a consciousness raising effort? Well, no, no, this is a this
is a business effort. Um. I'm very fortunate that one of my partners is a guy named Soul through Hell and Soul is the he ran Us West was the chairman and CEO, and he ran um Telstra in Australia and it's really innovative stuff down there, and he ran Orange in Europe. So having a guy like that. As a partner, he's you know, I'm the creative guy, but he's always about, you know, the bottom line business. He's the closer. So uh um that that that is um
job one. And everything we go to is educate and then you know, cut deals because that's what has to happen, right, we have to really um and and and what I love about him, he's about like, We're not going to take two months to negotiate this. I want you know, this done in very short order. And and literally we've gone literally in the past two months from just talking about this too. I can't get into a lot of detail, but some terrific results that I think we're that we're
going to yield soon. Is there is there a deficit of awareness of the opportunities in the entertainment industry in what you would call the Latino community, which I know is not a monolithic by any means of monolith. That's the problem. People go, We're gonna make something for Latinos, Like what does that mean? Which Latinos? What age? What where? What are the market segments you're talking about. It's a
business proposition, but are there areas? Are there you know, areas of Greater Los Angeles outside of the West and other areas of Houston. Are there areas, are their programs that could be done in schools? Is there things to just even again, even to spark the fire of interest in a budding comedian or director or you know, future ceo. You know, I think the most powerful thing to do is when years ago, when I first came to Los Angeles, I I you know, I was a guy from Colra.
I've never even been on a sound stage, and I did this show called Comedy Compodes and it was Carlos mincs first show ever. He was the host of it, and I was just, you know, this complete nobody from el had. I mean, I was freak now that I got to do the show. We've had like ten thousand dollars for the budget, and imagine a ten thousand dollar budget show, and I barely was able to fill eight
eight eight shows with comedians. And we were on Katie l A and we're up against at the time, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Chevy Chase in our Sineo Hall and we beat them most every Friday night. Of course we did, and we would do it again in l A. Because people connected to it. And what happened to answer your question is people saw themselves and they said, hey, if
Carlo Spincia it can do it. This kid named Fluffy glessie Us used to watch that show and Gabriel glessia I said, wow, if that guy can do it, I can do it. And then somebody saw flu So when you see yourself, you go, well, hell, let's not you know, an impossible dream, because, believe me, a lot of young Latino's dream about doing it, but when they see it as opposed to, hey, let's go to a school or let's have an outreach program. Just you've got to have
the product on the screen. And that'll, believe me more than open the doors. You can't be what you can't see. That's a I'm gonna steal that from you. Thank you. I would say, it's harder to be what you can't It's infinitely harder. Well, let's just hears. You're also involved in an adventure that is is tapping into what seems to be a really growing field right now of the world of live experiences, which is kind of you know, it seems like it. It says a lot about our
wired and crazy screen connected world. That we're now seeking seeking opportunities to have live experiences as opposed to living in the world. But um, but you are putting your producer and your comedian's brain onto a onto developing a project, a big real estate development project outside of Tucson. Tell us about how that happens. About A friend of mine called me and he said, uh, I bought a mall. It's like, honey, we bought them all and he got
this amazing deal on it. And it was it's a mall in Tuson and um and and he said, you know, what, do you think what let's do something really cool with it. And I was like great, And so we got in the sandbox and we just started playing. And basically it's a two fifty thousand square it's a six d square foot mall, but the footprint we're doing is about a
quarter million square feet. And it's going to have Instead of a traditional mall which has about se retail food, our retail is going to be wallless, so you don't really know when you're going from one into the next. The food is aligned with the retail, so when you're buying something that you can relate to as a consumer, you can also enjoy food that might want to cater to you, so kind of we kind of do that online, but now we're doing that with with expert real experiential.
There's activities because uh, I remember when I met with a friend of mine our kids grew up together, and I said, you know, living in l A when my kids were younger, because I and you went through this too. Is you know, if I wanted they want to paintball, they'd have to go all the way to south in the town, like a ninety minute drive. And they wanted rock wall, they'd have to go to Santa Monica. They wanted laser tag, they have to go to Fan Eyes. So this is all that under one roof. That's the
activity side. And then there's the entertainment side, which includes a fifteen screen theater and that's actually already currently there. Just went through a big remodel and um, and then we're doing these really cool uh they're sweets. They're the easiest way to describe it as like the ultimate man cave, you know, And I don't want to say that because it's inclusive of male females, not exclusive two men obviously, and because I was raised by five sisters and they'd
kill me for doing something like that. And um and literally you can go in there. It's got the most outrageous you know, its sound and and TV and set up and and comfortable chairs and you can order food from your phone and uh uh and drinks from your phone. So you know, my wife doesn't like when I have friends over to watch the games on Sunday, So I'll just rent one of these right when we ultimately roll them out, and I can go and watch the game with my friends instead of a sports bar where you
can't hear the game. And and when they're not being used for sports, gamers can use them. Uh they can also uh karaoke and then also for corporate events. And then we've also got this we're kind of recreating the comedy clubs. I used to own a comedy club back back in the day, you know, and you know it was like, you know, Rosanne used to work there when she was just be a housewife from Denver and uh Sinbad and Ellen degenerous. You know, everybody did the circuit
and came through Colora Springs. What was the name of your club, It was called jeff El doz Is Comedy corner and so funny. Sinbad was on Allen recently and he said, where do we meet? I don't remember. She asked him that because you don't remembers the jeff el Dez comedy corner. So he was a nice plug. But Zella lives on and um, you know, and and and
the the new environment we're creating. It's going to be a comedy room, but when it's not being used for because you know, the comedy shows only last three hours a night for was on the weekend, and then the rooms just empty the rest of the time. So we're turning the room into a gaming arena and on the sports arena, so it'll be e sports all the other time, corporate events and comedy. So everything is constantly fluid and constantly working in this uh new project that we're doing.
And it's really been a lot of fun because it's you know, it's like I told my partner, I said, you're not in the real estate business anymore. You're in the entertainment business. And how is it for you to look at instead of you know, instead of working on a script, to look at blueprints and use your you know, use your creative muscles to think about how you could make how you could make these these individual spaces really cool entertainment experience. You know what, it's not much different.
It's right, you're you're literally you're developing something. You know, you when you go build, you know, when you write a script, you write the treatment, you know, and then you you know, I always tell people, if you don't have the treatment, that's the blueprint, right, and then you get into the real the real site plans and the details of it, and and and that's the actual script part. And then there's the marketing of it. It's very similar. I told him, my my bud Don boorn I said,
it's like producing a TV show. It's really not much different about it's real estate. It's just you know, it's different because it's real estate. But it's not much different at all. Really. So there there are skills that you can say that do translate, that you learn in Hollywood, that you that do translate outside industries. That absolutely that's good news for people. Yeah, um, I know, you know when we first met, you were just at the outset
of of a really impressive run of you launched. You know, one of the few that you can count on two hands the number of truly independent from scratch cable channels that have been launched in the last you know, going on let's call it fifteen sixteen years, and one of them was CTV, which is now the Fuse channel. UM, tell us what that experience, you know, going soup to that's from the idea, to raising the money to to cajoling cable operators to carry it. What did what did
that process you know, going on fifteen plus years ago? Now, what did that process teach you about the industry, about the television industry, about my finance? Um? Well, first of all, I when we first came to New York to raise the money for it, you know, because I was very passionate about getting it done because it's like and here I'm having the same conversation, we need more content for our community. You know, all these years later and we start.
We used to jokingly point to all the buildings where we had been rejected. And then it got to a point where we had pointed the buildings we hadn't been rejected, because we literally we made the rounds and went to everybody. And this is at the financing stage, financing stage, finance, and I was telling somebody yesterday. The story when because what had happened is you would have the distributors because
they were you know, they were the gatekeepers. And they then you had the finance saying well, we can't give you distribution until we know you have the financing. We love the idea, but you need the financing. The finance guys going well, we can't give you, you you know, find money until we know where you have distribution. So we're in a meeting one day and and um, somebody said, well, you know, we would love to love the idea. We'll
we'll give you distribution. Do you have the you know whatever seventy eight million dollars at the time to launch us. And I looked at him and said, yeah, you know, just flat outlied. Yeah. And my partner jerked next to me. He walks out and sorry, n you just told him we had seventy million dollars. I'm like yeah, And he believed he didn't he and he said, what are we gonna do? I said, well, now we're gonna go to the finance people and say we have a commitment for distribution,
will you finance this? And and that's exactly what we did. And we use that little white lie to UH to get money because then we had distribution. Now it's it sounds easy in the retelling, but I'm guessing it took a lot to a lot of spine it was to pull off and to make sure everybody got to the same point. Yeah, when when push came to show you
had that seventy million dollars in your pocket. I'll tell you the dumbest thing I will tell you I ever did in the in the process was I had a meeting with UH with Bob Iger at one time, and and um, and Bob loved the idea of it, and he's like, how about I just write a check for the whole thing? And and and this is I will always remember what kind of idiot I was. I said, Um. I looked at it, and I said, no, thank you, I just want part of it. And he says, why
would you not take a full check? I said, because, well, if you write a big check like that, that makes you an expert in what I'm an expert in. And I don't need any more experts around the table right now. I got this. And he looked at me, says, mar rather cocky, aren't you, I said, no, I just know what I'm doing, and and and if I you know, if you guys own it, then we'll just be you know, beholden to you and we want to build value for you. So you have to trust that we know what we're doing.
And uh, there's a whole another long story around that whole thing, but um, you know, it was it was that was the dumbest move I've ever made. And just think, you know, what what might what might have been? Well well, and and by the way, on the advert that was
just on the finance and the advertising. Once we launched, we had to go out and you know, we'd go to the we'd go to the general market ad agencies and they say, hey, this is great, we love the programming, love love the real but your last name is Valdez. You should go to the Hispanic agencies. Then we go to the Hispanic agencies and they say, well, wait a second, this is programming in English, we only do Spanish language.
Should go to the general market agencies. So there so we ended up just going directly to the brands because that was the only way we could sell it in Do you think that in your experience, do you think that that the advertising and financing is there Are they a little more enlightened or is there more openness. There's a lot of money out there right now, I can tell you that, um private equity. Yeah, I think it's
more money than there's places to put it. Quite frankly, I think people are gonna start burying it in coffee cans in their backyard because there's just a lot out there. Um. I think they're yes, they're open to it. Um. You know, I think there was like the the when the Disney um tell visa thing didn't work, Uh that that I don't think that helped the market. Um you know, because everydything if they can't do it, you know, and something I think I think that was harmful to the market. Um.
You know. In my perspective at that time was look, um, you guys, you've hired Televisa who has never produced two seconds of content in English. They're a Spanish language programmer, and it's in Miami. And you know, the joke about Miami is I love Miami because it's so conveniently located the United States. Right Well, Miami is a Spanish Spanish
non market. So I think when you look at it from the architecture of it, there were some missteps, because people make all the time, um and um, you know, as in in CTV we had I thought we did a lot of great things. And one of the things I will tell you that I didn't do well as I didn't learn the difference between a venture capitalist and a vulture capitalist, and there is a big difference. So that's that's for the book I'm going to write that.
Hopefully you'll help me someday. Yeah. I suffice it to say here that you did part ways a few years in with with CTV after being immensely successful. I somehow managed to part ways, as you say, a story for another time, story for another time. Well, you certainly have no shortage of irons in the fire and interesting things happening now. Thank you so much for coming in and and talking to us about about issues that are not
easy to talk about. And it's especially great to have somebody coming at it from with a real business perspective, not a you should or this is the moral thing to do, but this is this is the business thing to do. This is the bottom line that you need to because that is the thing, as we all know, as much as everybody wants to do good you gotta
move market. And if if I can say one real thing about that too, is when you look at you know, part of our pitch right now we tell people is look, there's a strain on the supply on on writers and directors because there's so so many people buying content now and it's the same people over and over, and they're going making content for an audience sexually shrinking, you know, because every I think it's every minute to Latinos turn eighteen and to non Hispanics turn retire, for non Hispanics
turn retirement age every minute. So you're making content for a shrinking audience. Whereas we're saying, we have a wealth of writers and directors that's growing, and an audience and an audience that's growing. So you do that properly, you experience top line growth. And again, as you know, to get top line growth, you have to have bodies. People have to go in and as to the g d P and all all the different economic factors have to happen, and you can't grow without people for top line growth,
and we're growing. You look at a lot of big companies, I want to say, like in in in the banking industry, Uh, their growth is like seventy based from the US Latino market. Uh in Walmart. It's like, I mean, some of the big big industries out there, all their growth right now, not not their revenue, their growth is all coming from Hispanic. When do you think that we will see the first the first fruits of new cadence? Do you think shows movies?
Are you focused on television right now? Yes? Um, before the end of this year. Great, All right, well we will definitely stay tuned for that. Jeff, thank you so much, thanks for coming in to talk about important issues. Well, thank you, thanks for listening. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.