Venezuela's telenovelas struggle back from the brink

A worker on the set strikes the clapperboard to the shout of "Action!" and three women launch into a heated argument about an abandoned child who was rescued from the streets but cannot be tamed of her violent impulses.

The scene from the Spanish-language soap opera "Piel Salvaje," or "Wild Skin," would be unremarkable if not for the uphill battle the Venezuelan producers waged to get here in a country that nearly lost its telenovela industry after churning out some of Latin America's most-memorable melodramas for more than a half century.

The socialist government took Radio Caracas Television, then one of the country's oldest broadcasters and creators of telenovelas, off the air in 2007 after accusing it of supporting a brief coup five years earlier against then President Hugo Chavez.

Hundreds of actors and screenwriters lost their jobs and its studios went dark. The exodus of talent, a gradual crackdown on the media and a financial crisis that caused advertisers to flee nearly drove the industry to extinction.

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