"Ugly Betty" on Cable in Latin America

So, the Sony cable station in Brazil has started advertising that it will be broadcasting the hit-American TV show "Ugly Betty" this month. What could possibly be wrong with that? Well, only that the world has already seen this show.

That's right - "Ugly Betty" is an English (the language, not the country) version of an immensely popular Columbian show called "Yo Soy Betty, la fea" (commonly known as "Betty, la fea", the moniker it had when it was on when I lived in Costa Rica). "Betty la fea" was so popular that it has been broadcast throughout the world (among other places, in Austria and Japan), and made the rounds throughout Latin America, including Brazil and Mexico (where non-native novelas almost never do well). Sony even seems to be somewhat aware of the obstacles of re-selling a show that people have already seen. Their main line for advertising? "Ugly Betty. This time, she's even uglier."

The thing I love most about all this (and the thing that is most culturally imperialistic) is that, by broadcasting "Ugly Betty" on cable here, they have exported the American version of a Latin American program back to Latin America. It's like the multi-national, multi-cultural version of "The Producers," only instead of making a movie based on a musical based on a movie, you just get a Latin-American translation of an English adaptation of a Latin American show (in its manifest national forms).