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Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez’s upcoming US Hispanic cable network El Rey has found a CEO in the shape of a former Telemundo and MTV programming executive.
Antoinette Alfonso Zel
Antoinette Alfonso Zel has joined English-language network El Rey, one of four new independent channels launching at the end of next year with the support of cable giant Comcast Communications.
Zel has spent the past four years as CEO and president of creative agency La Comunidad. Prior to that she was senior VP of network strategy for NBCUniversal (NBCU)-owned Hispanic channel Telemundo.
In that role she was responsible for all marketing and research, and ran youth-skewing cable channel Mun2 and Telemundo Internacional. Prior to that, she spent 13 years at MTV Networks Latin America.
El Rey launches next year through the partnership of Rodiguez (Sin City, Desperados) and entertainment business development house FactoryMade Ventures. The venture is backed by Comcast, which had been ordered to launch ethnic minority-focused independent cable channels as a condition of its multibillion-dollar takeover of NBCU.
As a result, Comcast is also going into business with rapper Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs, former basketball star Magic Johnson and Hispanic television veteran Constantino Schwarz.
