Robert Rodriguez's English-language, Latino-focused cable channel, run out of Austin with FactoryMade Ventures. Its first original series, From Dusk Till Dawn, was made in Austin with more than $8 million in state incentive grants, and the channel reached 40 million homes at its peak.
Austin · Closure: the cable channel went off the air December 31, 2020
El Rey Network launched on December 15, 2013. It was an English-language cable channel aimed at Latino audiences, founded by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez and owned in a joint venture with FactoryMade Ventures. Univision held a minority stake. El Rey was one of several minority-supported channels Comcast agreed to launch as a condition of its 2011 merger with NBCUniversal; the others were REVOLT, Aspire and BabyFirst Americas.
The channel's programming leaned on action and genre films, with reality, animation and lifestyle shows around them. Its first original series was From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series. In March 2014 the Austin Chronicle reported that Troublemaker Studios, Rodriguez's company, was filming the series at Austin Studios on East 51st Street. Texas Film Commission records show its production company, Dusk Productions, LLC, was paid $4.05 million in state incentive grants for the first season and $4.13 million for the second. Together the two seasons reported more than $36 million in Texas spending and more than 2,000 Texas jobs.
El Rey reached its widest audience early. TV Series Finale, citing Programming Insider, reported that the channel was in 40 million households in March 2015. By November 2019 it was down to 33 million. In January 2020, AT&T dropped the channel, and Charter followed in September.
On November 6, 2020, in a release datelined Miami and Austin, Univision announced that it had exited its minority position in El Rey, which it described as an entertainment cable network and production studio. That left Rodriguez and FactoryMade as 100 percent owners, and Univision said it would keep providing sales and distribution services. Rodriguez, the network's chairman, thanked Univision for seven years of partnership and said El Rey had achieved more than he had imagined. FactoryMade CEO John Fogelman called the change a testament to what the partners had built.
The independence was brief. After Univision's exit, carriage fell to about 13 million homes, and in December 2020 the network announced it would go off the air. El Rey signed off on December 31, 2020, after seven years.
| Year | Title | Kind | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | From Dusk till Dawn: The Series | TV series (El Rey's first original; shot in Austin) | ↗︎ |
| City | Where | Years | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austin | company base (Univision's 2020 release was datelined Miami and Austin) | 2013-2020 | ↗︎ |
| From Dusk Till Dawn's producer, Dusk Productions, LLC, was paid state incentive grants of $4,047,072 for the first season (2015; $18.0 million Texas spend, 1,031 Texas jobs) and $4,125,433 for the second (2017; $18.3 million, 1,024 jobs). | ↗︎ |
| Carriage peaked at 40 million households in March 2015, fell to 33 million by November 2019, and dropped to about 13 million by December 2020. | ↗︎ |
| AT&T dropped the channel in January 2020, and Charter dropped it that September. | ↗︎ |
| El Rey was one of the minority-supported channels Comcast launched as a condition of its 2011 merger with NBCUniversal, alongside REVOLT, Aspire and BabyFirst Americas. | ↗︎ |
| Univision described its goal in the partnership as reaching young Hispanics 'in a way that nobody had done before.' | ↗︎ |
| From Dusk Till Dawn was in production at Austin Studios in 2014, when Troublemaker Studios was filming it next door to Rooster Teeth's new stage. | ↗︎ |