Origins and foundation of Aplaplac The origins of
31 minutos date back to 1990, when its creators Álvaro Díaz and Pedro Peirano entered the
Universidad de Chile to study journalism and met each other for the first time. At first, Díaz did not meet with Peirano nor was he interested in talking to him, but they got together to do some academic work, which led both of them to realize that they shared the same sense of humor and to become friends. The two met again in 1995, when they produced programs such as
Plan Z and
El Factor Humano for the Chilean television channel
Rock & Pop. But, contrary to their expectations, neither production prospered. In addition, the channel ceased broadcasting on December 1, 1999, leaving both Peirano and Diaz unemployed. To get out of this situation, they founded the production company Aplaplac together with Juan Manuel Egaña. Initially, Aplaplac developed two programs:
Sangre, sudor y lágrimas (Blood, Sweat and Tears)—a human-interest program bought by the sports channel
PSN—and
Mira tú (Look at You), a cultural program produced with funds from the
Consejo Nacional de Televisión in 2001 and broadcast by Televisión Nacional de Chile in 2002.
Mira tú stood out for its quality and became the production company's letter of introduction, The project presented was entitled
El gabinete del Doctor Mojado (The Wet Doctor's Cabinet), and in it a fish was conducting a television program from a fishbowl. In one of its segments, a puppet reported on what was happening with the excrements in the treatment plants. Aplaplac won the contest and obtained funds to produce 21 episodes that would be broadcast on Televisión Nacional de Chile. The idea evolved into a puppet and marionette news show called "31 minutos"—a name that originated from the contest rules, which mentioned that the projects had to last half an hour. Additionally, the series' name and logo parody that of
60 minutos, a controversial newscast broadcast by TVN between 1975 and 1988, that served as a propaganda medium for the
Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship. The logo also takes elements from that of the American cable network
CNN's. At the same time, Peirano worked at the Chilean newspaper
El Mercurio, where he met the artist
Rodrigo Salinas, who—together with the artists
Daniel Castro and Matias Iglesis—formed the art collective
La nueva gráfica chilena. Peirano invited them to be part of the production team for 31 minutos, leaving Salinas and Castro as scriptwriters along with Díaz and Peirano; Iglesis as art director, establishing the visual identity of the program and its characters; and Juan Manuel Egaña as executive producer of Aplaplac and
31 minutos. Due to requirements from TVN, a stable female character had to be included in the episodes. The actress and comedian
Alejandra Dueñas—known from La nueva gráfica chilena—later joined the team, giving life to Patana's character. The conviction of their creators at the beginning was to make a type of television program that they would have liked to see as children. They were fully aware that minors no longer consumed only programs that were aimed at a child audience and, based on that, came to the idea that a satire of the news had to be made. The idea also arose of inventing songs and presenting them in a musical classification. To that end, Peirano—who shared friendship with the members of the Chilean
funk rock group
Chancho en Piedra—introduced
Pablo Ilabaca, the guitarist of that band, who brought with him a compact disc of tracks without lyrics, with which he didn't know what to do. The first instrumental Díaz and Peirano heard was the one that later became the central theme of
31 minutos, of which they quickly became fond. The rest of the tracks were used for the soundtrack of the episodes, along with other songs invented by the team. Ilabaca remained as the music producer for
31 minutos, giving rise to the Ranking Top segment, of which the character Policarpo Avendaño—interpreted by Daniel Castro—is in charge.
Success and internationalization 31 minutos made its debut on March 15, 2003. Its first episodes marked 6 points of screen rating, but as time went on it began to popularize and increase its audience to an average of 14 points. Initially it was a news show of interest to children, In view of the popularity achieved by the program in 2003, the creators agreed to produce a second and third season, this time with funds from the channel. Part of the program's success lies in its script and characters, with hidden references to Chile's social reality. It has also been successful among young and adult audiences: the
double entendre that it handles is manifested, for example, in the fact that the puppets are ironic imitations of real Chilean television characters, and recall events or television events that characterized Chile in the 1970s and 1980s. It naturally sold out all its copies in less than a day and came to sell more than 200,000 copies. Not only was an album released, but on July 28, 2004, there was a release of
31 canciones de amor y una canción de Guaripolo, which included the songs of the second season. The name of the album refers to the book
Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada by
Pablo Neruda. Its premiere took place in the
Paseo Ahumada in Santiago and, in one week it sold 20,000 copies and achieved the position of platinum record. The songs of the third season were compiled in the album
Ratoncitos -in which the musician
Angelo Pierattini-, which was awarded a gold record a few days after its release. In addition to the records with the songs of the program, near
Christmas 2003 the home videos
Lo mejor de 31 minutos and
Los Policarpo Top Top Top Awards were released, which together sold more than 35,000 records. This fact made them the best selling local
DVDs in the
history of Chile. The popularity obtained with the program has led its characters to be part of publicity and propagandistic campaigns in Chile. For example, Tulio and Bodoque appeared in commercial messages on the transport system of Santiago de Chile,
Transantiago, to educate people on how to behave on the buses. In 2010, UNICEF released a commercial entitled "Rearmemos la vida de niños y niñas" (Let's revive the lives of children) with the aim of raising morale after the
2010 Chile earthquake. These ads show Tulio talking about the fear he feels from the tremors, but his friends from the news encourage him by telling him that together everything is better and that it is normal to feel fear. Another ad with UNICEF was about short films showing musical numbers in which Patana gives Tulio advice on how to prevent
influenza. In addition, since 2015, Mario Hugo has been the face of the Santiago Metropolitan Regional Government's campaign entitled "Cuidado con el perro" (Be careful with your dog), which calls for sterilization, responsible ownership and care of dogs in public spaces. The second season of
31 minutos made its debut on March 20, 2004 on Televisión Nacional de Chile, and simultaneously the program began to be known in other countries. On June 9, 2004, Nickelodeon's Latin American signal bought the first two seasons of the series, and premiered them on September 17 of the same year. The network broadcast the episodes until 2007. Thanks to Nickelodeon's children's audience, the program became internationalized, with good reception in countries such as
Mexico and
Brazil —where it was dubbed into Portuguese— On June 19, 2005, the third season began to be broadcast on TVN, consisting of only 15 episodes. Mexico was the first country other than Chile to broadcast the series on open television when it premiered in 2006 on Canal 11. Thanks to Canal 11's broadcasting, in 2007 the
EMI label released the album
31 minutos for the first time in Mexico. Both events made
31 minutos a popular hit in the country. Ro Velázquez —a member of the Mexican group
Liquits— came up with the idea of producing a tribute album for the program in which fanatical artists chose their favorite song to record in their own way. The tribute was named
Yo nunca vi televisión and was published in December 2009 under the label Terricolas imbéciles. In it, fourteen Chilean and Mexican artists performed some songs from the first three albums of
31 minutos. Yo nunca vi televisión was distributed in Mexico and the southern
United States, and sold about 5,000 copies in its first weeks. In addition to its physical version, it was uploaded to the
iTunes store for downloading.
Theater plays and concerts At the end of 2010,
31 minutos performed a play called
Resucitando una estrella ("Resurrecting A Star"). The plot revolved around a television talent show, where Tulio Triviño and other characters were looking for the best old-fashioned artist to give them the chance to be again. These performances began as a tour of southern Chile to bring joy to people in the localities most devastated by the earthquake of February 27 that year, but some time later the play arrived in Mexico, in 2012.On March 31, 2012 they performed at the
Lollapalooza Chile festival. It was such an impact that the band (composed by the musicians Pablo Ilabaca on the electric guitar, Felipe Ilabaca on the bass,
Camilo Salinas on the keyboards and
Pedropiedra on the drums, together with the voice actors of the program) scheduled four presentations for July in the
Movistar Arena of Santiago. These events were very well attended and popular, in addition to being released on a live album called
Gira Mundial —under the label
Feria Music—. In the second half of 2012 the Organizing Committee of the
2013 Viña del Mar International Song Festival confirmed
31 minutos as one of the national artists for the journey. They performed on February 27, 2013, being the first puppet group to set foot in the
Quinta Vergara. In more than an hour and a half of presentation they achieved a show that was praised by the press and applauded by the audience present, which gave them the 4 maximum awards of the evening. They also achieved the maximum position of tune of the 2013 edition of the festival: 53 points of screen share. Coinciding with the same day of the presentation, the company Amnesia Games developed a game of
31 minutos for cellular phones in alliance with the producer Aplaplac and the telephone company
Claro Chile. The game stood out in the stores of
Windows Phone and
Amazon and managed to position itself in the first places of the
App Store. In view of the success achieved at the festival, they decided to play the stages again, but this time with
Radio Guaripolo, a show directed by Alvaro Diaz and written by Pedro Peirano, which officially opened at the Teatro Municipal de
Las Condes. In it, Guaripolo owns a radio station, where he plays pranks on the phone to the rest of the characters of
31 minutos. One of the most important events of this production was the premiere of the song "Mi mamá me lo teje todo", which would later be part of the soundtrack of the fourth season.
Fourth season and present In addition, after nine years of absence,
31 minutos announced its return to television, according to an interview given by Aplaplac to the Chilean newspaper
La Tercera. The fourth season began its recordings in 2013 and was broadcast on TVN. In addition, the program again won a fund from the CNTV to finance it. The team underwent restructuring, such as the change of Juan Manuel Egaña —who became Manager of Management and Development of
Chilevisión— to Alejandra Neumann in the executive production of Aplaplac and the series, and the performance of Juanín, who although dubbed by Salinas did not participate as a puppeteer in the recordings, so the actor Héctor Velozo had to take his place. Salinas only brought his characters to life live in the presentation at the 2013 Viña del Mar Festival. This season's premiere was on October 4, 2014, viewed for the first time in
HD (16:9) format. The first episode marked 9.3 points of screen share, but was surpassed by the program
Morandé con compañía of the Chilean television channel
Mega —which obtained more than 15—. It ended the night of December 27, 2014 after a cycle of twelve episodes. Despite the low results it obtained on Televisión Nacional de Chile, from October 2015 it was bought and transmitted by the Cartoon Network signal to Chile,
Peru,
Bolivia and
Ecuador, and then began to be broadcast to all of Latin America by
Boomerang. On January 5, 2020 it was added to Netflix Latin America. During the premiere of the fourth season's chapters,
31 minutos adapted their 2003 Christmas special to a montage entitled
Calurosa Navidad, with which they performed during the month of December at the Centro de las Artes 660 in Las Condes. The program had already established itself as a band, and Díaz and Peirano decided to focus their future on touring and live concerts. During 2015, they prepared a play based on
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which was presented in January 2016 as part of the
Santiago a Mil International Festival. It was then shown at venues such as the Teatro Municipal de Las Condes in April 2016 and the
Teatro Oriente de
Providencia in July of the same year. It again participated in the 2017 version of the Santiago a Mil International Festival. On September 12, 2015, Aplaplac independently released the album
Arwrarwrirwrarwro —where the songs of the fourth season are located—. The album had a pre-sale in Mexico, in July of the same year, during a presentation of
Radio Guaripolo. Pablo Ilabaca and Álvaro Díaz were in charge of its production, but it had the support of Felipe Ilabaca, Camilo Salinas and Pedropiedra in the instruments. On the other hand,
Radio Guaripolo performed for the last time at the
Festival Osorno de la Leche y la Carne, on January 30, 2016. For the tour in Mexico 2016, Aplaplac released
Tremendo Tulio Tour, a parody of the tributes of artists for their careers, where they give one to Tulio Triviño. The success of the tour led them to play live for the first time in
Argentina and
Colombia. The first performance took place at the
Usina del Arte in
Buenos Aires on April 21, 2018. This was the last show in which Pedropiedra participated as drummer for
31 minutos, so
Leonardo Corvalán —drummer for Chancho en Piedra— took his place. The second was at the
Festival Rock al Paque in
Bogotá on June 30, 2019, with three performances on the same day. In January 2019, a fifth studio album was confirmed, without relying on the music of a season. To promote it, the first single was "Ritmo sideral", released on October 11, 2019. It was followed by "Perro chico" and "Lucía, la sandía", which appeared on November 22, 2019 and January 17, 2020, respectively. On November 20, 2019, the organizers of the Mexican festival
Vive Latino released the line-up for its 21st edition, where it highlighted
31 minutos with a double performance, on March 14 and 15, 2020 with a special show. They named the show
Yo nunca vi televisión —like the homonymous song on the first album of
31 minutos—, and in it they recreated the format of a newscast —like in the TV series— and played a repertoire of songs of which "Ritmo sideral" and "Perro chico" were part. During February 2020 a tour in Mexico was scheduled in which
Yo nunca vi televisión was to perform during March in the cities of
San Luis Potosí,
Guadalajara and
Mérida, but to prevent contagion from the
COVID-19 pandemic it was decided to reschedule the dates for October of the following year. Of the original presentations,
31 minutos could only be presented on both days at the Vive Latino festival. The crisis caused by this disease was the reason for
31 minutos to join for the third time with UNICEF to launch the "Cuarentena 31" campaign, with the aim of addressing issues that affect children during confinement. The capsules were broadcast on Cartoon Network and Boomerang Latinoamécica, and on July 29, 2020, a song entitled "Primavera" was launched to encourage people in the midst of the health crisis. On September 1, 2020, UNICEF named
31 minutos as
Goodwill Ambassadors for UNICEF Chile. Díaz and Peirano have stated on multiple occasions that it is not possible to make a fifth season for Chilean television, because this is not a format where the program can remain —adding to this the high costs of production—. The reinvention through tours, new songs and records has been key to the validity of the franchise. In any case, none of them have ruled out the possibility of making it on
streaming platforms, according to the interest of these. == Characters ==