Delia Delavera Discusses the Alma Awards

NCLR, the National Council of La Raza is the organization behind the Alma Awards. NCLR is the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. In 1995 NCLR created the Alma Awards as a complement to our work advocating for Latino families and the Latino community in the United States. This year we’re very proud to be presenting the 2011 Alma Awards with two of our key partners, the NBC Universal Comcast family and our presenting sponsor, PepsiCo. These two partners recognize the value of the Almas and the Latino community and we’re pleased that with their support we’re going to be able to share this incredible program with a national audience. We are thrilled we are to have Eva Longoria and Bob Bain as collaborators with us in producing this show and we are excited about our co-hosts Eva and George joining us again to co-host the NCLR Alma Awards. It’s going to be a fantastic show and we look forward to hearing more about it. _Delia Delavera, Vice President for National Council of La Raza for the California region-the Alma Awards.


Delia Delavera, Vice President for National Council of La Raza for the California region
The Alma Awards

By: Daedrian McNaughton

 

What is it like to be a part of NBC this year, and will the show also transmit onto Telemundo?

Delia Delavera: It’s been a great partnership. It really has been fantastic working with it’s not just NBC but it’s the entire family. Telemundo and Mundos are key partners in helping us promote and present the show. I understand it’s going to be rebroadcast. This is one of the first times ever that the show will actually be – there is a commitment to rebroadcast the show. And so we’re very excited about that. And letting more people kind of experience and take part in the presentation. Because we get such great feedback when we’ve aired it in the past but we’ve only had one airing. So NBC has really stepped up to the plate and the Comcast, broader NBC Universal Comcast family has really stepped up to the plate and put a lot of resources and leveraged a lot out of turning this program around so quickly. And we’re very appreciative and also very engaged as well as our other partners looking at a number of different ways we can activate and kind of get the audience excited about the show because we did have a shorter period to kind of ramp up to this and get people to move to the new broadcast partner of NBC. So it’s been wonderful. Everyone has been coming up with a lot of really creative ideas to turn some really unique things around in this show. And there is a lot of commitment from the leadership and throughout the entire company. So we’re very pleased about the partnership and what it’s been able to do to help us kind of reenergize the Alma Awards for 2011 and hopefully going forward as well.

 

What are some of the major changes and cutbacks in categories?

Delia Delavera: It was difficult knowing that we were going into a one-hour show to kind of see what works, how we were going to maintain the quality and the star power and the energy of the show in half the time. There were lots of different categories that we’ve been able to recognize and honor over the years and every year it changes. You have strong film years, strong TV years or some special acknowledgment that we need to incorporate into the show. So every year is different. We do hope that we can build this show back into a two-hour program and incorporate more of these other categories. But this year we focused on film, television and music. Those will be on-screen. We engage the audience in a virtual rating VIP so they can vote for their favorite stars and earn a VIP experience in attending the show. And that was kind of another way to also engage a larger, more of the audience, the viewers and get them energized to tune into the show. There is a lot of great work being done in front of and behind the cameras. Those are things we want to acknowledge. They’re core to the mission of the Alma Awards. And with more time and also looking at maybe other platforms that we could leverage in the future for the Alma Awards and (what’s so perfect) for the Alma Awards, leveraging it into maybe other events or other forums o how we can lend the Alma Awards name to enhancing the visibility of the great talent that is working throughout the industry and giving them a higher profile and higher visibility. So we look forward to as we’re rebuilding and strengthening the Alma Awards show also strengthening the Alma Awards portfolio and how we’re able to leverage that into other opportunities down the road. So maybe we can work with you on that in the future but we know we have a lot of partners that are interested in developing this a little bit more. So we look forward to that.

 

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