What is "telenovela"

n. A television soap opera presented as a miniseries

A telenovela ( or ; , ), ) is a type of limited-run serial drama originally produced in Latin America that has become popular in European, Asian, and other global television networks. The word combines tele, short for televisión or televisão (Spanish and Portuguese words for television), and novela, a Spanish and Portuguese word for "novel". There are similar genres to the telenovela that use the novela format, but go by varying names including teleserye (Philippines), téléroman (Canada, specifically Quebec), or simply dramas (Asia and the rest of the Arab World).

Telenovelas differ from soap operas in that they rarely continue for more than a year. This makes them shorter than soap operas, but still much longer than serials. Episodes of telenovelas usually last between 30 and 45 minutes, and rarely do ordinary telenovela episodes last for more than an hour each, as this is the length standard of telenovela final episodes. The telenovela combines drama with the 19th-century feuilleton, and naturally evolved from the Latin American radionovela, according to Blanca de Lizaur.

The medium has been used frequently by authorities in various countries to transmit sociocultural messages, by incorporating them into storylines, which has decreased their credibility and audiences in the long run. By the 1970s and 1980s, Mexico became a world pioneer in using telenovelas to shape behavior, and particularly successful in introducing the idea of family planning. Mexico and Brazil would later, in the 1990s, play a key role in the international exportation of telenovelas, thus the so-called 'Telenovela Craze' that spread in many regions in the world until today.

Recent telenovelas have evolved in the structure of their plots and in the themes that they address. Couples who kiss each other in the first minutes of the first episode sometimes stay together for many episodes before the scriptwriter splits them up. Moreover, previously taboo themes like urban violence, racism, and homosexuality have been incorporated into telenovelas in more recent years. Since the 2000s, Latin America and Asia altogether have emerged as the biggest producers of telenovelas, which remains one of the most common forms of popular entertainment in the world.

Many telenovelas share some stylistic and, to a certain extent, thematic similarities to the soap opera, a format popular in the English-speaking world; because of these similarities, the American colloquialism Spanish soap opera has come to describe the telenovela format (the telenovela format in and of itself has been attempted in the United States but, generally, to much less success than in Latin America). However, telenovelas differ from soap operas primarily in their length; soap operas tend to have indefinite and continuing runs (with such programs only ending via cancellation by their network because of weak viewership) with intertwined storylines that can last in the most successful cases for decades, while telenovelas tell one self-contained story, typically within the span of a year or less. The end result is that the telenovela requires a faster-paced, more concise style of melodrama compared to the soap opera.

Telenovela , also stylized TeleNovela, is South Korean cable and satellite specialty channel.

The network transmits in SD (Standard-definition) until 2019 and in HD (High-definition) with approximately 7 million subscribers by December 2010.

Both channels' programming includes scripted television series ( Brazilian telenovelas produced by TV Globo), miniseries, films, documentaries, specials and other programs. All are subtitles in Korean to adapt to the local culture and then in Portuguese and Tetun to East Timor.

Telenovela is an American single-camera sitcom television series starring Eva Longoria and Jencarlos Canela. The series is a behind-the-scenes look at a fictional telenovela (Spanish soap opera) that is shot in Miami, Florida, and follows the daily life of the show's star who does not speak Spanish, despite being the center of attention from the co-stars and crew. The series premiered on December 7, 2015 on NBC, and concluded on February 22, 2016.

On May 13, 2016, NBC canceled the series.