Who's behind MTV Tr3s' new Latino program?

by Nathalie Molina Niño

Earlier this month MTV and Nacional Records announced a new late-night music show in the tradition of Yo! MTV Raps and 120 Minutes, called “La Hora Nacional,” with a focus on Latin Alternative music. According to MTV Latin America’s VP, Marc Zimet, having Tomas Cookman, the founder of the Latin Alternative Music Conference and president of Nacional Records –the label of artists like Manu Chao and Aterciopelados, gives the show the “ultimate stamp of credibility.”

Naturally, we at Being Latino were excited to hear the news and especially to speak directly to Tomas. What follows is the first in a series of excerpts from a lively chat with this famous Puerto Rican tastemaker and serial entrepreneur.

How did La Hora Nacional come to be?

The wonderful thing about the program is that it came up as a natural conversation between two music lovers talking about how there are a lot of great bands and a lot of great video clips out there. It wasn’t like a TV producer trying to pitch it to every network that would pick up the phone.

Are you going to host the show?

You know, we’re not going to have a host! I don’t want to waste a single second of the show on anything that’s not music! I want to put as many clips in there as we can squeeze. We’ve partnered with a really cool director to do these amazing bumpers and a guy from Puerto Rico who’s got an amazing eye that really helps it all feel like something. Hopefully you’ll be able to stay up late and watch it!

It’s at 3am East Coast time, right?

Yeah it’s like crack head prime time. But I remember a lot of the really famous, early music shows were always at really late times. That’s when people are getting home, winding down and relaxing after a night out and they will spot something and say “what the heck was that? Who was that?” We want to create as many of those late night moments as we can, the ones where people open up their iTunes and just say, “I’ve gotta buy that single!” or they feel compelled to like the band on Facebook or whatever the connection is. It’s the “last call” hour, and I think there’s a certain coolness about having it at that hour. We’re pretty happy about it.

With the ubiquity of reality programming out there, does this mean MTV is going to be doing music again?

Well that’s more a question for MTV. But we do live in a world of reality television and YouTube, so I think anything we can do to program music on television is a beautiful thing. But at the end of the day, the people have to speak. If they want to see this, they have to demand it. I like to think that La Hora Nacional will have so much unique content that it’ll really become a discovery process, and hopefully it’ll open up people’s minds to listen to more alternative acts.

That’s what my company is all about. Everything we do is about discovery; luckily it’s worked well for us. I started out in the projects of the Lower East Side of New York by myself in a bedroom. The music industry is at a very interesting point, there are so many opportunities and one thing is clear, no matter what you do, it’s important to keep on changing.

Any final thoughts for our readers?

You know, these things get built and it’s important that people come. Thank you for supporting La Hora Nacional!

To learn more about Nathalie, visit Global Misfit.

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.

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