(20 October 2007 4:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Telenovela producer, distributor, broadcaster and merchandiser Dori Media Group (DMG) has announced that its subsidiary, Dori Media International GmbH, has once again partnered with video sharing site YouTube to launch www.youtube.com/elrefugio.

This is a branded channel dedicated to El Refugio (The Shelter), one of Dori Media Group's recent telenovelas. As a result of this partnership, some El Refugio content will be made exclusively available online for the YouTube community.

This is the fourth DMG branded channel to be launched on YouTube, following the success achieved by www.youtube.com/telenovela, www.youtube.com/rebelde and www.youtube.com/nataliaoreiro which were the first channels dedicated to telenovela on YouTube launched by Dori Media in August.

Since these channels have been aired on YouTube, there have been more than five million viewings of DMG's video clips, with a constant growth of an extra 100,000 viewings per day.

In September, one Sos Mi Vida video clip was among the most viewed clips on YouTube and Dori Media partner channels are now among the top 10 most viewed partner channels on the whole of YouTube after only a brief period on air.

YouTube users have the ability to comment on clips, rate them, recommend them to friends and post their own video responses to communicate with other viewers. The new branded channel is also linked to Dori Media's official website.

DMG president and CEO Nadav Palti says, "We are delighted at how immensely successful our YouTube partner channels have been and we are pleased to offer this dedicated El Refugio site to all our viewers and to YouTube's internet users.

"Providing our content online gives us greater access to telenovela fans worldwide and these partnerships fit in well with our strategy to use new media platforms to promote the telenovela genre and establish our leadership in this market," he said.

El Refugio tells the story of a group of teenagers from different social backgrounds who meet at an abandoned theatre by chance. There, they meet a once famous music professor and soon unite through their passion for music to save the theatre from destruction.