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In an exclusive interview with Variety, Ronald Day, Telemundo’s president of entertainment & content strategy, drilled down on what has made action-packed series “Lord of the Skies” (“El Señor de los cielos”), the company’s longest-running Super Series franchise and a bonafide hit.

With Season 9 set to premiere Feb. 13, “Lord of the Skies” has earned its street cred across a spectrum of young adults, split evenly among males and females. Per Nielsen, its eighth season “ranked as the #1 drama series in primetime, regardless of language, 6 out of 9 nights since its premiere, among adults 18-49, and on 8 out of 9 nights among adults 18-34.”

Season 9’s trailer, loaded with explosive scenes and showcasing the first time the series shot in Mexico’s Chinatown, clocked more than a million hits in 24 hours, he noted.

Drug lord Aurelio Casillas, played by Mexico’s Rafael Amaya, is “relatable,” observed Day. Despite his ruthless nature, “he...

When we think of telenovelas, we're quick to get nostalgic about the ones we grew up watching with our moms and abuelas. We tend to associate them with being an older-generation thing, with their overdramatic and also very predictable love narratives. But that doesn't mean there aren't young Latinx folks out there who don't tune in. It makes sense, considering there are audiences who do consume content and entertainment both in English and Spanish. In fact, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises established the term "200ers" to describe them, referring to a demographic of Latinxs who identify 100 percent as American and 100 percent as Latinx and "share the values of both cultures, are bilingual, and flawlessly jump between cultures." This would explain why Emmy Award-winning telenovela "El Señor de los Cielos," with its eighth season returning to Telemundo on Tuesday, Jan. 17, has become a cross-generational hit over the years, appealing to a wider Latinx audience than ever thought possible.