02 Jan 06 Dora the Conqueror

Character has maintained popularity through respect, trust

January 2, 2006
By Don Fernandez

By all the laws of pop convention, this media moppet has no right to rule.

Curious and ambitious. Decidedly ethnic. A thinker. Bilingual. And positively free of bling.

Convention, though, rarely starts a revolution.

“My daughter exclaims ‘vamanos’ to tell me when we need to go somewhere,� said Michelle Hughes, mother of 2-year-old Addison West. “She can count to five in Spanish. She loves Dora.�

A common face in households with toddlers, “Dora the Explorer� is an unlikely cultural phenomenon. She’s won a Peabody Award. She’s the first Latina to earn a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Her merchandising income was estimated to be $4 billion at the end of 2005, including that Fisher-Price Only the Xbox360 topped Dora’s Talking Kitchen as the most desirable item of the holiday season. Her corporate parents at Nickelodeon say 26 million viewers see her every week and one in every three preschool girls owns something with Dora on it.

What makes Dora resonate so strongly with children?

Apparently she offers them a rare quality: respect.

“She looks directly at them, her eyes are wide open,� said Andy Malinoski, vice president of marketing at the MapleCreative agency in West Virginia. “If you watch Dora, she gives them time to interact with her. They trust her and have an emotional response to her.�

Now her empire includes a spin-off show — “Go, Diego, Go!� — starring her animated cousin, Diego. Not that gender has stifled her appeal.

“Dora helps ground both sexes with a positive, moral mindset before they are assaulted by the negative images in many popular games and toys,� said Rebecca Sutherland Borah, an associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati.

As innovative as Dora appears, her creation was somewhat calculated — with the best of intentions. Nickelodeon executives sought a character with a multicultural bent, someone who would resonate with kids who grew up in bilingual households.

“Kids were embarrassed of speaking two languages,� said Brown Johnson , executive creative director on “Dora the Explorer.� “We wanted to make it be magical, powerful.�

In December 1997 co-creators Chris Gifford and Valerie Walsh were working on an interactive, adventure-style series that involved a bunny as the lead. A species transplant took place, along with a Latin infusion.

The creators assembled a “think tank� of professors, authorities on race relations and others who added thoughts on multiculturalism. A great deal of tweaking and months of research later, 7-year-old Dora Marquez was born. Accompanied by her simian sidekick, Boots, and her backpack, named, well, Backpack, Dora embarks upon adventures that are set up similar to a computer screen. Along her journey, she poses questions to the audience and seemingly waits for their response.

“The spine of the show always had to do with a character overcoming obstacles and the viewer helping them along the way,� said Gifford.

Another element that separates Dora from other characters aimed toward tykes: She has a life. One the post-toddler set envies.

“Preschoolers are our least powerful citizens,� Gifford said. “They feel as if they are actively helping (Dora) every step of the way. That feeling of empowerment is so exciting to them.�

Source: Kansas City Star

02 Jan 06 ABC’s World News Tonight assigns Hispanic Co-Anchor

January 2, 2006
By Charlie McCollum

ABC begins the new post-Peter Jennings era of “World News Tonight” with veteran ABC newsies Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff officially taking over as co-anchors. Vargas, who has considerable experience filling in for Jennings, is the first Latino to be a network’s lead anchor and the first female co-anchor since CBS’s ill-fated Dan Rather-Connie Chung team a decade ago.

Source: The Mercury News

11 Dec 05 Cristina’s magazine shuts down

After 15 years, Cristina La Revista, the nation’s No. 2 Spanish-language magazine for women, is calling it quits.

November 30, 2005
By Christina Hoag

The magazine of Hispanic television talk show queen Cristina Saralegui, one of Miami’s best known stars, is folding after 15 years in publication.

The December issue of Cristina La Revista will be the last.

The closure took industry watchers by surprise: Cristina La Revista is the No. 2 Spanish-language women’s magazine in the nation. However, it comes at a time when competition is heating up in the Spanish-language magazine industry, as companies make plays for the burgeoning Hispanic population.

Publisher Editorial Televisa and Cristina Saralegui Enterprises said Tuesday they could not reach an agreement to extend their contract, which expires Dec. 31.

Marcos Avila, husband and business manager for Saralegui, also known as ”Oprah con salsa,” said he had wanted to ”tweak the business model” and to expand circulation and marketing, among other items.

”We really wanted more from the relationship,” Avila said. “But it wasn’t possible with the current contract, and with the hurricanes and traveling, we ran out of time. We’re very sorry it had to end like this.”

HOPE TO RELAUNCH IT
Editorial Televisa said it hoped to relaunch the magazine in the future.

”Cristina’s a great brand and she’s done a great job of reinventing herself over the last couple years,” said David Taggart, general manager and group publisher of Televisa’s U.S. magazine division in Miami.

With a circulation of 88,000 monthly, Cristina La Revista ranks behind only Vanidades in the category of Spanish-language women’s magazines, according to HispanicMagazineMonitor.

Vanidades, however, had three times the ad revenue, the monitoring service reports on its website.

The Spanish-language magazine industry has gotten more crowded in the past two years. Earlier this year Siempre Mujer became the latest entrant in the Hispanic women’s niche.

The shutdown of Cristina La Revista also underscores the pitfalls of magazines built around the name and brand of a celebrity, such as Oprah and Martha Stewart’s Living. Keeping the celebrity satisfied is key to keeping the title alive, said Samir Husni, University of Mississippi magazine consultant.

Not all such publications are successful. In recent years, American Media’s Thalía, named for Mexican singer Thalía, was discontinued after only a few issues, while Rosie O’Donnell ended up in a court fight with the publisher over the control of the magazine Rosie.

‘A NICE RUN’
In the case of Cristina La Revista, both Televisa and Saralegui benefited for a long time. ”They had a nice 15-year run with it,” Husni said.

And Saralegui’s brand is not likely to suffer, said Gustavo Godoy, a veteran of the Hispanic media industry. Saralegui has built a one-person business empire, and is branching out from media to other business outlets. This year, she launched a furniture line, Casa Cristina. She also has a clothing line and licensing agreements on everything from accessories to household items.

”She’s very solid with her show,” Godoy said. “She’s diversified her portfolio. She’s known from East Coast to West Coast.”

Source: The Miami Herald

09 Dec 05 Hispanic Radio Stations Go Spanglish

November 29, 2005
By Tiffany Rainey

No need to cringe when you can’t think of that exact word anymore. With radio’s hottest new stars, Pitbull and Daddy Yankee, perfecting their own brand of Spanglish on stations nationwide, being bilingual has become not only normal but necessary.

Quickly becoming one of radio’s most popular formats, Hispanic urban, or “hurban� for short, combines more traditional Hispanic tempos with the urban music that second- and third-generation Hispanics have quickly latched onto as their own. The personalities, like the artists that lead the format that includes everything from Latin-flavored hip-hop to reggaetón and beyond, speak Spanish with a generous sprinkling of English. Radio giants saw the opportunity to catch a growing market and jumped at it. Clear Channel has converted four stations since officially debuting the format in Dallas in 2004, and Entravisión, whose Super Estrella format has flirted with Spanglish pop for the last three years and now dedicates one station purely to the format.

“When you look at each market, there are huge pockets of Latinos that weren’t being served by other Spanish-language broadcasting that primarily targets first-generation Hispanics,� says Alfredo Alfonso, Clear Channel’s senior vice president of Hispanic radio. “We saw an opportunity to attract the 18 through 34-year-old market.�

And that they did. Recent Arbitron studies have shown that KLOL-FM, Clear Channel’s Dallas station, increased its audience share by 42 percent since its debut. Its sister station in Albuquerque has captured a whopping 126 percent increase in the 18 through 34-year-old demographic with its switch to the format. “It has a lot to do with the numbers growing. Everything in America is statistics,� says Cuban-American rapper Pitbull about the recent mainstream acceptance of a genre that he has been actively promoting for several years. “We buy products and therefore they’ve got to market towards us. What better way to market to a population than through their music?�

The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that Hispanics will be the largest teen minority group by year’s end, and will account for 20 percent of teens by 2015. To station owners, that equates to lots of advertising revenue. Clear Channel’s Miami station, WMGE-FM, attracts everything from big-name advertisers like the U.S. Armed Forces to local clubs promoting their next party.

But the real question is: How will hurban’s blending of genres and language affect the assimilation of Hispanics? While there are those who complain that it detracts from the heritage of younger Hispanics already strongly influenced by their Anglo and African American peers, others say that the format may prolong the assimilation process. Still others say it merely reflects a change.

“A lot of [Hispanic] kids are raised learning English and we’re reflecting that cultural difference,� Alfonso says. “We try to create stations that allow young Hispanics to continue to live in their culture. Just because we are Hispanic doesn’t mean we only speak Spanish.�

Pitbull, as a first-generation Cuban who grew up amid Miami’s eclectic mix of southern bass and Hispanic-Caribbean imports, sees language bending as natural and beneficial to Hispanics.

“A lot of cultures don’t speak Spanish the way they should because they were in areas where… if they spoke Spanish, or English with an accent, a lot of opportunities were taken away from them,â€? says the rapper, whose album Money Is Still a Major Issue is due out this month. “Now it’s the total opposite. If you speak English and Spanish fluently, a lot of opportunities open up.â€?

He says hurban music, especially his own brand of Latino crunk, is turning the tables on assimilation with its widespread acceptance among other urban populations in the United States. “It’s come to the point where you have blacks [and] whites that want to learn Spanish,� he says, citing the recent collaborations with mainstream hip-hop artists like Lil’ Jon as an attraction for non-Hispanic listeners. “And that’s where you start batting stereotypes and crossing barriers.�

Source: Hispanic Magazine via New America Media

07 Dec 05 All rise for the new Hispanic judges on television

Mainstream TV aims to reach Hispanic viewers by adding more Hispanic judges to their court show lineups

December 4, 2005
By Christina Hoag

As the saying goes in the TV biz, if a concept works, do it again, and again, and again.

The burgeoning U.S. Hispanic population and the success of two Hispanic TV judges in syndicated court shows haven’t gone unnoticed by Hollywood programming denizens — two more Hispanic benchsitters have been signed up for next fall.

Cristina Pérez will jump ship from Telemundo to Englishlanguage syndication in Twentieth Television’s Cristina’s Court while María López will take the lead in Judge María López from Sony Pictures Television.

They will join Alex Ferrer and Marilyn Milián to give Hispanic gavel-bangers four of about 10 court shows slated for the 2006-07 season. López, Ferrer and Milián are Cuban Americans and Pérez is Mexican-American.

”It’s a reaction to what people want to see,” said Luis Estrada, a Texas-based programming consultant. “With the number of second-generation Hispanics growing, you want to see Hispanics speaking English on TV.”

A forerunner of reality TV, court shows have evolved into a staple of daytime programming after The People’s Court with Judge Joseph Wapner made its debut in 1981. They’re particularly popular with women and build loyal followings. TV producers like them because they’re relatively cheap to make.

Although the shows have been criticized as low-brow fare, viewers love the entertainment value of real-life dramas and the educational aspect of learning about a justice system whose inner workings often seem arcane to everyday people.

STRONG PERSONALITIES
A judge who isn’t afraid to inject a lively spurt of strong personality into the proceedings is key to making the show work.

But as court shows have multiplied across the programming grid, producers have sought to put fresh twists on what has become a tried-and-true genre. Some shows, such as Divorce Court, focus on a different niche of the law. Cristina’s Court will take a CSI-like approach to examining evidence.

Ethnically diverse judges are another way to make shows stand out and broaden appeal. Black TV judges have outnumbered their non-Hispanic white counterparts for the past couple years. Now it appears Hispanics have become the judge du jour.

”I’m surprised it’s taken five years,” said Miami’s Milián, the first Hispanic courtroom captain who started presiding over Warner Brothers’ The People’s Court in 2001. “This business is all about marketing to your audience. Not to take away credit from my expertise, but I’m sure the fact that I’m Hispanic is something that’s helped People’s Court to do as well as it’s doing.”

SUPERIOR TALENT
Twentieth Television did not set out to seek a second Hispanic judge, says programming president Paul Buccieri.

”We look for superior talent,” Buccieri said. “It just so happens that Cristina is Hispanic. We saw some old episodes and fell in love with her right away. She’s a dynamic person. But we do see it as a plus that she’s Hispanic given the growing Hispanic influence in the media.”

MOST POPULAR
Pérez’s show also comes on the heels of Twentieth’s success with Judge Alex. In October, Fox Television Stations renewed Judge Alex for 2006-2007 after the show had aired for just a month. Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown are the most popular TV court shows, according to Nielsen Media Research.

A former Coral Gables cop and Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge, Ferrer said he wasn’t surprised that more Hispanic judges are in the pipeline. ”If a show is successful, everybody wants to do the same,” he said.

Sony Pictures Television was forthright about its goal of making inroads in the Hispanic market with López, a former Boston judge who resigned in 2003 after criticism for sentencing a child molester to probation instead of prison.

”Judge María López’s dynamic personality and strong appeal to female and Hispanic viewers will have a big impact in the thriving court genre,” said John Weiser, president of distribution for SPT.

The show has already been snapped up in 90 percent of the country’s TV markets, including WFOR-CBS4 in South Florida.

Twentieth’s Buccieri was sanguine about possible saturation of Hispanic judges. ”In the end, the best talent will resonate and rise to the top,” he said.

Estrada lauded the new trend of Hispanic-led justice as having an ancillary effect on audiences, as well. ”It shows Hispanics in positive roles on TV,” he said.

Source: Miami Herald

06 Dec 05 TV networks finding that diversity is good business

December 6, 2005
By Phil Rosenthal

In the push for diversity in television — the campaign to add people of color to key positions on both sides of the camera — it’s not the beauty of the rainbow that ultimately brings the big networks around.

It’s the promise of a pot of gold.

There are many explanations why ABC, for example, has Latinos in so many prominent roles in so many of its series of late, from Eva Longoria’s Gabrielle on “Desperate Housewives” and Jorge Garcia’s Hurley on “Lost” to Sofia Vergara’s Lola on “Hot Properties” and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s title character on “Freddie.”

Not the least of those reasons, however, is that dinero talks.

“The genesis is good business,” said Stephen McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment. “We’re a broadcast network, and you look at the multicultural nature of this country these days and I think you would be making a big mistake as a broadcaster to not recognize that and program for it.”

With the fight for viewers ever-more competitive, thanks to the growing number of entertainment options, ABC has identified U.S. Latinos, a population more than 40 million strong, as a target of opportunity, even if almost half their number watch mainly Spanish-language TV.

For one thing, it’s a growing group.

Going into this fall season, Nielsen Media Research determined that while the number of U.S. television households increased 0.5 percent from a year ago, to 110.2 million, the number of Latino TV homes rose 2.9 percent, to 11.2 million. They’re closing the minority gap with African-American homes (up 0.8 percent, to 13.2 million) and ahead of Asian-American homes (up 3.2 percent, to 4.2 million).

“This is now a business proposition,” said Alex Nogales, who heads the National Hispanic Media Council. “Latinos are now 14 percent of the U.S. population. That’s a lot of soap that we buy. We’re like the last frontier, the last group that’s been marketed to, so everybody wants a piece of the action.”

Run on Latino talent
This has fueled a run on Latino talent in a bid to better reflect the world that would-be viewers actually live in. Or the world in which they wish they lived.

That’s part of why Jimmy Smits is a would-be presidential successor to Martin Sheen on NBC’s “The West Wing,” and why Benjamin Bratt stars on the Pentagon series “E-Ring.” It’s also part of why Fox’s “24” has Carlos Bernard and “That ’70s Show” has Wilmer Valderrama.

CBS, meanwhile, this season has added Cote de Pablo to “NCIS,” while Roselyn Sanchez joins Enrique Murciano on “Without a Trace” and Eva LaRue joins Adam Rodriguez on “CSI: Miami.” Then there’s Charlie Sheen on “Two and a Half Men.”

Beyond giving better roles to Latino performers and airing a pair of sitcoms centering on Latino families — “George Lopez” and “Freddie,” which has one character who speaks only Spanish — ABC this fall became the first English-language broadcast network to make its entire regular prime-time lineup available in Spanish through secondary audio program (SAP) dubbing and closed-caption subtitles.

Fox is said to enjoy an advantage of more than 80,000 Latino viewers over ABC overall, but ABC is tightening the race and doing particularly well with Latinos age 18 to 49. Among that advertiser-coveted demographic, ABC has the top six shows this season.

What’s most striking about much of its diversity is that a good deal of it isn’t that striking at all, unless and until one makes a point to sit up and take notice.

Why shouldn’t an ensemble hospital drama such as “Grey’s Anatomy,” which boasts broadcast network TV’s first black female prime-time show runner in creator Shonda Rhimes, showcase people from a variety of backgrounds?

Why wouldn’t there be a Latino couple on upscale Wisteria Lane in “Desperate Housewives”?

The series “Invasion” is set in south Florida, so naturally top billing would go to an actor of Cuban descent, Eddie Cibrian.

Travelers, almost by definition, come from various places, hence the diversity of “Lost.”

And so on.

Reflecting a diverse nation
“You look at these big casts and all these diverse characters and what it allows is access points for so many different people,” said McPherson, who recently became the first recipient of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Televisionary Award for his diversity efforts. “If you go to any school now, go to the mall, go to the movies, you look around. This is a multicultural country. It’s certainly reflected in our music, and it’s only natural that it would be reflected in our broadcast television.

“Unfortunately, that agenda has been so forced in the past that you would have a show that has all white faces and you would say, `Oh, boy, we should really have the token character in there to have some diversity.’ With shows like `Lost’ and `Desperate’ and `Grey’s,’ all of a sudden there were casts that organically made sense.”

Source: MercuryNews.com

05 Dec 05 Conflicting Signals in Hispanic Media

December 2005, HISPANIC BUSINESS Magazine
By Joel Russell

In the first nine months of 2005, Univision’s share price declined 9.5 percent. Entravision and Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS), the two other publicly traded Spanish-language broadcasters, fell 8.5 percent and 37.7 percent respectively (see chart, "Hispanic Broadcast Stock Values"). The total market capitalization for the three companies declined an impressive $1.2 billion.

But revenues continue to climb at all three broadcasters.

Philip Remek, media analyst at the brokerage firm Guzman & Co., explains this paradox of rising revenues and falling share prices in terms of investor expectations. In short, the deceleration in ad spending growth, documented by data in the Hispanic Business Media Markets Report, has caught the attention of Wall Street.

"Those stocks all had high-value multiples, high expectations for growth over the long-term – and yet it is a cyclical business," says Mr. Remek. "People were expecting much higher growth rates in general out of those three stocks, and that explains the positive [revenue] growth but slumping share price."

"Growth rates aren’t as fast as investors thought one to two years ago," says Kit Spring, research analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. "The main issues are that the supply of Hispanic media is growing. English TV and radio stations are switching to Spanish, so existing players aren’t getting all of the upside. Those three companies – Univision to a lesser extent – are leveraged to businesses that are slowing due to new media, mostly the Internet, but also satellite radio, TiVo, and others."

Univision As Direction Setter
Marla Backer, an analyst with Research Associates/Soleil Securities, sees Univision as the leader that sets the direction for how the other stocks trade. At Univision "there has been top-line growth, but not much bottom-line growth," she says. "There’s concern that growth has slowed, and the company may not be able to monetize its recent [television] ratings gains. And even though we have revenue growth, it’s still not a cheap stock."

Ms. Backer also puts Spanish-language broadcasting against the background of the U.S. economy. The stock market in general has not performed well in 2005, and media stocks in particular have suffered. "The market goes down, so there’s negativity about media stocks," she explains. "Now if Univision were still outperforming the market as expected, investors might say, ‘If I want to be in media, I’ll move to Univision.’ But that’s not happening."

Market Shifts Seen on the Street
Mr. Spring attributes the doldrums of traditional media stocks to competition from new media. "All that growth at Yahoo and Google comes out of the hide of publishers or broadcasters," he says. "Among Fortune 500 corporations, the proportion of their ad budgets is shifting from broadcast to online."

Long-term demographics also affect the stocks’ popularity. "The [Hispanic] consumer growth is not at all ambiguous; it is very clear. It will last for at least another generation," says Leland Westerfield, an analyst at investment bank Nesbitt Harris, as quoted by The Wall Street Transcript.

However, as the Hispanic audience shifts from Spanish to English, it could erode the broadcast market, especially for the biggest player. "For Univision in this decade, the opportunity is to invest not only in winning over brand marketers to the Hispanic media environment, but also to invest in the programming to bilingual Hispanics," Mr. Westerfield says.

Mr. Remek agrees that language is emerging as a factor for the media. "People who are bilingual will pick and choose media programming," he says.

So far, Univision hasn’t moved in the bilingual direction – its advertising must appear in Spanish, for example – but the company has taken immediate steps to shore up its share price. In February 2005, the company announced a buy-back program of up to $500 million over five years. "So far, across the media landscape, several companies have tried buy-backs," says Mr. Spring. "They seem to have stemmed the fall in stock price but not really stopped it."

Although Univision is open to be acquired – CFO Andrew Hobson has publicly invited offers – Ms. Backer doesn’t see the buy-back as a preparation strategy. "They don’t have to buy stock to be acquired because [Chairman] Jerry Perenchio owns most of the voting stock anyway," she observes. "They see this as an opportunity to buy the stock at a discount to where the stock will trade in the future. They expect that with their ratings and revenue gains, the stock will trade higher next year."

Notably, Univision’s bittersweet relationship with Mexico’s Televisa, its main supplier of telenovelas, took a new twist this year when two Televisa executives resigned from Univision’s board and the Mexican company filed a lawsuit charging breach of the programming contract. But Mr. Remek downplays the rift, saying "it’s a stormy relationship, but it continues. The future is growth in TV revenues."

Entravision’s Fortunes Tied to Univision
Entravision’s fortunes depend on those of Univision. Entravision owns or operates 47 Univision affiliate stations in second-tier markets, plus it owns more than 50 radio stations and an extensive billboard inventory. In a recent downgrade of Entravision to "Market Underperform," Mr. Spring notes that the company "is not cheap, and unlikely to escape the negative secular industry trends" in the media business.

In addition, when Univision merged with Hispanic Broadcasting in 2003, federal regulators ordered Univision to reduce its stock holding in Entravision from approximately 30 percent to 15 percent. In July 2005, Univision bought two San Francisco-area radio stations from Entravision in exchange for $90 million in stock. The transaction lowered Univision’s holdings to about 20 percent, leaving another 6.2 million shares to sell by March 2006.

"For Entravision it’s a big issue," says Mr. Remek. "Univision has so far avoided selling [Entravision] shares in the open market, but there’s no guarantee they can accomplish the rest of it that way. That weighs on the share price."

SBS Most Hard Hit
SBS, the smallest of the three publicly traded Spanish-language broadcasters, has suffered the most during 2005. Despite double-digit revenue growth and ownership of top radio stations in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, its shares have lost almost 40 percent of their value. The highly leveraged company gives Mr. Remek "concerns about cash flow going forward." Mr. Spring sees the stock price languishing, but with little downside risk given the already reduced price.

In December 2004, SBS acquired a station from Viacom in exchange for a 10 percent equity stake in SBS. "I see that as a prelude to further integration between the two," says Mr. Remek. "I think SBS would be an attractive target. The issue would be valuation, and the value has been high."

While 2005 hasn’t been kind to media stocks, Mr. Spring sees more trouble ahead. Higher energy costs will cut into discretionary spending. Because Hispanics spend a bigger slice of their income on energy than Anglos, "Hispanic and minority media stocks are most vulnerable to rising energy prices," according to his analysis.

Eventually, Mr. Remek believes online ad spending will be rationalized and investors will adjust their expectations for growth. "Spanish-language media is still a growing pie, and we do anticipate continued growth at rates superior to English-language media," he says, "with the caveat that there will always be more distribution platforms to compete for those ad dollars."

Source: HISPANIC BUSINESS Magazine

05 Dec 05 The Future Clicks for Hispanic Media

December 2005, HISPANIC BUSINESS Magazine
Jesus Chavarria

This issue’s Media Markets Report shows the Hispanic market simultaneously confronting two profound shifts: Hispanic consumers are moving from Spanish to English, and at the same time from traditional media to the Internet. The double crossover has caused confusion about the direction of the market on both Madison Avenue and Wall Street.

The two trends originate from the same underlying demographics. Hispanics’ progress in education, income, English-language usage, and product sophistication makes the conventional Spanish-only media strategy of the past 30 years seem inadequate. Growth of the second and third generation means young Hispanic consumers have more English-language skills and less connection to a country-of-origin culture. In that context, the slowing growth of Spanish-language ad spending since 2003 looks like a rational response to changes in the market (see article "Market Slump or Long-Term Trend?").

But since 2002, online ad spending to reach Hispanics has grown 900 percent, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. Online expenditures now total an estimated $100 million (see article "Surfing in Two Worlds"). That’s more than several traditional media categories, including out-of-home and magazines. And clearly the Spanish-English shift fuels the traditional-to-online media shift: More than three quarters (79 percent) of U.S. Hispanic Web visitors express a preference for English or bilingual Web sites, according to comScore Media Metrix.

The way the two trends have occurred simultaneously demonstrates the market’s rapid development. Minority populations often lag behind the general market’s front edge, but in this case the Hispanic market has kept pace. The U.S. general market is suffering from the same dislocation of advertising and media – as Google, Yahoo!, and other sites take dollars and audience away from national broadcasters and newspaper chains.

So far, Hispanic marketers and media outlets have struggled to adapt to the shifts, with varying degrees of success. Attempts at bilingual media such as Mun2 and some local newspapers haven’t produced any high-profile successes. Univision has developed a Web portal, but without providing any English-language content. Many Hispanic media outlets have decided to stick with "businesses that are slowing due to new media," in the words of Kit Spring, an analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. (as quoted in the article "Conflicting Signals").

In light of consumer preferences, it appears that the future will "click" for Hispanic media and the audiences they serve. At Hispanic Business, the online format allows us to provide more research and articles than could ever appear in a paper-based magazine alone. Therefore, our strategic plan for 2006 calls for HispanicBusiness.com to provide more of the data-intensive, relevant content that readers have come to appreciate from the pages of Hispanic Business.

Source: HISPANIC BUSINESS Magazine

24 Nov 05 Reggaeton Broadband Channel Barrio 305 Completes Shooting First Season

November 24, 2005
Via 24-7PressRelease.com

Barrio305 the authority on reggaeton and urban Latino culture completed the 2005 season of programming with its reggaeton based series Barrio 305. The ongoing programming format will focus on the meteoric rise and fast paced lives of today’s top reggaeton artists, the latest in street legal car culture and of course the models that make it all happen.

The 2005 season features behind the scenes peeks at the making of music videos, backstage access and exclusive in-studio interviews with top Latino artists like Nicky Jam, Boy Wonder and Wisin y Yandel. The show will encompass the entire Reggaeton culture, while locations range from the beautiful sands of Puerto Rico to the neon streets of Miami Beach

Expect the 2005-2006 season to capture the essence of Urban Latino culture with its smart and irreverent take on the emerging Urban Latino scene.

With its first season under wraps the company is in securing distribution deals with with various networks and mobile content distribution outlets.

Barrio 305 has already obtained one of kind exclusive interviews with all the major hitters in the Reggaeton and Urban Latino music scene. Hip hop mogul Fat Joe, MTV sensation Pitbull, Reggaeton superstar Nicky Jam and reggaeton top gun Tego Calderon are some the big names that have participated in making Barrio 305 the sole authority when it comes to Reggaeton and Urban Latin music coverage.

About Barrio305.com:
The name Barrio 305 is a Spanglish term that describes the emerging Latino youth culture in the US. Barrio is Spanish for neighborhood and 305 is the area code for the city of Miami; the name captures the bi-cultural nature of English dominant Latinos living in urban areas through out the US.

With Latinos representing the fastest growing portion of the population, Barrio 305 hopes to expand Reggaeton’s audience outside the major cities. Online-featured artists include leading acts such as Tego Calderon, Queen Ivy, Don Chezina and Daddy Yankee. As it’s popularity continues to grow steadily, broadband channels such as Barrio 305, will act as a necessary outlet for upcoming artists to stimulate the forefront of the "Urban" Latin America.

22 Nov 05 Latin Kings

November 21, 2005
By Michael Starr

Without so much as a press release, ABC has quietly been adding Hispanic characters to nearly every one of its biggest prime-time shows.

"I think it’s been part of our initiative for a couple of years and it’s something that’s important to me," says ABC entertainment president Stephen McPherson.

"The idea of diversity … has been put under the category of ‘the right thing to do,’ but I look at it as a business decision," McPherson says. "There’s a gigantic Hispanic audience out there.

"If you’re in the broadcasting business and you’re not looking to reach the broadest audience, I think you’re making a mistake."

It’s a mistake that McPherson and ABC are avoiding like nobody’s business.

The casts of "Lost," "Desperate Housewives," "Hot Properties" and sitcoms "Freddie" and "The George Lopez Show" all feature at least one Hispanic actor.

Last week, the network announced it had hired Broadway star Sara Ramirez for an extended role on "Grey’s Anatomy."

And there will be more Hispanic characters on ABC’s midseason shows, including "What About Brian," "In Justice" and "Jake in Progress."

"Freddie" even features TV’s only subtitled character (Freddie’s Spanish-speaking grandmother.)

And ABC became the first major network to makes its entire prime-time schedule in Spanish, dubbed or subtitled.

"We’re the most aggressive in terms of how many shows are dubbed [into Spanish]," McPherson says. "We think it’s worthwhile."

So what’s behind ABC’s Hispanics-in-prime-time push? McPherson says it has more to do with betting on a gut feeling than any sort of master plan.

"There isn’t a tremendous amount of analytical data out there. Nielsen doesn’t have a real good measure [of Hispanic viewers] in terms of specifics," McPherson says.

"It’s more than that. Just go to a mall or a restaurant … and you realize our society is incredibly multicultural. And the amount of households speaking multiple languages is growing every day."

The integration of Hispanic characters into its prime-time shows has paid off for ABC. While more Hispanics are watching Fox this season, ABC has cut the gap to 81,000 viewers, according to Nielsen.

McPherson is careful to point out, however, that while ABC is adding a more Hispanic flavor to prime-time, it’s doing so without obvious pandering or meeting some sort of quota.

"It’s one thing to say, ‘OK, we’re growing our Hispanic audience. We’d love to get that audience to watch ABC.’

"It’s another thing to make sure that programming is something they’re going to respond to," he says. "You just don’t want to put people of Hispanic heritage on the air.

"There are all different angles in how to approach our audience, as opposed to the forced ‘do-good’ way as it was in the past: ‘We’ve got a show with all white males – let’s put in a black guy!’

"The audience is very sophisticated; people are going to respond to that kind of broad, multicultural look in TV shows, whether it’s ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ or ‘Lost’ or ‘Freddie’," he says.

"When it feels organic and truthful, people will respond. If it’s being forced or ‘managed,’ they really won’t.

"I think it’s good news for TV in general to start to see these casts be a part of the everyday process – as opposed to being a forced agenda."

Source: HispanicBusiness.com

21 Nov 05 Short End LATINO SOAPS SCRUB UP

UK trade paper Broadcast reports the Latin American TV staple of "telenovelas" could be "the next big thing to take the international TV market by storm". It says German viewers are already hooked on these daily soap operas and points out Fremantle Media plans to produce the formats in other European territories. Meanwhile, a US version of the Colombian hit, Betty La Fea (Ugly Betty), is being reworked for Salma Hayek to screen on ABC, the Desperate Housewives network.

Source: OnFilm via RedOrbit

14 Nov 05 Changing demographics doom all-Tejano radio stations

Interest in Mexican-Texan music fading as Latino market changes, station executive says

November 14, 2005
By Joe Gross

On Oct. 20, Daryl Quintanilla tuned his radio to KTXZ 1560 AM and heard something unexpected.

The rootsy Tejano sounds this former musician had played and cherished were no longer on the air. Station owner Border Media Partners, a Latino radio company that owns 35 stations from Dallas to Brownsville, had replaced the "Supertejano" format with "Mexican oldies," featuring artists such as Vicente Fernandez, Jose Jose and Rocio Durcal.

Reflecting a change in Latino demographics, Austin is now without a full-time Tejano station. The tastes of recent Spanish-speaking immigrants now profoundly influence radio, television and newspaper consumption in the Central Texas Latino community, and those tastes run more to Spanish-only, often imported media, rather than Texas-grown bilingual fare.

The state’s Latino population grew by almost 2.4 million during the 1990s, increasing to nearly 6.7 million out of Texas’ total population of 20.8 million. Immigration produced about half of the increase.

Through the same 10-year period, Austin recorded a 534 percent increase in the number of non-English speakers ages 5 and older. The vast majority speak Spanish. Texas recorded a 114 percent increase, to 494,000 people.

With such a dramatic population shift, immigrant-friendly trends permeate Latino life in Austin, Texas and beyond. Earlier this year, Univision spent time as the top-rated network in the U.S. in prime time among 18- to 34-year-old viewers — Spanish- and English-speaking. Univision is available in 98 percent of U.S. television households.

Austin’s Latino nightclubs, once dominated by Tejano music, now fill niche markets within the Latino community. One may have a Norteño night, another a regular reggaeton event. The latter genre, with its mix of hip-hop, Latin and reggae flavors, is proving a popular mix with both English- and Spanish-speaking audiences.

Long a home to bilingual newspapers, Central Texas now supports several Spanish-language publications, including Rumbo and ¡Ahora, Sí!

A Round Rock bilingual newspaper, El Puente en Condado Williamson, launched in October.

Still, the lack of a full-time Tejano station — which reflects a longstanding Mexican-Texan culture — rankles some.

"I’m all for cultural history and where our parents came from," Quintanilla, 55, says. "Why can’t I tune in to the radio and hear the local music? My sister told me this was a huge topic in bars around town."

The answer, according to Border MediaPresident Tom Castro, is ratings, pure and simple.

"If the station could draw even a 2 share as a Tejano station, it would still be on the air," Castro said of a rating that translates to approximately 9,000 to 12,000 listeners. According to our research, there was a very strong demand in Austin for Mexican oldies and a weak demand for Tejano."

This switch also reflects the changing nature of the Latino market.

In Austin, Border Media owns five popular and powerful stations in addition to 1560 and its sister FM frequency, 92.5:

•KHHL 98.9 FM, known as "La Ley," a Mexican regional station.

•KXXS 104.9 FM, which plays Spanish pop acts such as Shakira and Juanes.

•Norteño station KFON 1490 AM.

•Spanish-language news and talk on KELG 1440 AM.

•Border Media’s only all-English local holding, Air America 1600 AM.

The company’s local stations reach a whopping 79 percent of Central Texas’ Latino market, and La Ley’s morning show, featuring the popular show "El Chulo y la Bola," is No. 1 with the all-important 18- to 34-year-old demographic.

Now that 1560 has switched, none of these stations plays Tejano full-time.

Times aren’t changing just in Austin, where Tejano stations were once the backbone of Latino radio.

Throughout Texas, Tejano stations have been quietly switching formats. In a weird irony, Border Media launched a "Supertejano" station in Dallas after seeing a market vacancy when Univision’s radio division folded its Tejano station.

Around these parts, the Tejano listeners might be loyal, but Castro contends there aren’t enough of them: "In the first week after that format went off the air — about a month ago — we did not get, at least in the first two weeks, one call."

And yet, listeners such as Quintanilla, who served in the U.S. Army before becoming a radio DJ, are frustrated by the development.

Back in 1981, he called modern Tejano "la onda nueva," and remains proud of that time as well as his Mexican-American — and Mexican-Texan — heritage.

"I’ve been in the car business for 20 years, I advertise on Spanish radio, and some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard comes out of Mexico," Quintanilla said. "But part of that market is Tejano. I grew up in the United States. I pay taxes here."

Ruben Ramos, Austin’s most prominent Tejano musician, took the format shift in stride.

"They are looking for a bigger market, a different market." he said. "That’s understandable. But why not go after both markets? Why not play four hours of Tejano a day and not just exclude the whole Tejano culture off the airwaves?"

Without a full-time Tejano station, Ramos worries about getting the word out about his concerts, but sounds resigned to the market realities.

"We’ve just had to drop back and reorganize. I’m using the Internet a lot more now, as well as newspaper advertising," he said. "We’ll get through this."

Indeed, Ramos’ fellowTejano veteran Little Joe Hernandez y La Familia played Friday night’s grand opening of the Diamond Ballroom at 2410 E. Riverside Drive.

Hernandez and his band were joined by artists Latin Breed, Yayo Castillo y Rumores andDavid Marez.

Estavan Azcona is a doctoral candidate in the University of Texas’ ethnomusicology program. He studies Chicano music, has lived in Austin since 1995 and agrees that big media’s devotion to the bottom line is responsible for such shifts.

"Popular demographic shifts play a big role seen these things," Azcona said. "The musical appetites of the Mexican American population are distinct from the emerging immigrant population, and in the big cities, the biggest radio stations cater to popular music from Mexico."

Azcona adds that another part of the problem may be the changing nature of the idea of "Tejano."

"Tejano is a wide category that includes (contemporary artists such as) Selena and Emillia Navarra and older variety of music, but is this a broad concept, but it’s also fundamentally a regional popular music," Azcona said.

As a result, Tejano musicians are increasingly looking outside Texas and marketing their music accordingly.

"Tejano musicians have started to change the sound of their music," Castro says. "(The band) Intocable, from Zapata, is a good example. They just won a Latin Grammy, and they are Tejano people, but they’ve incorporated more Northern Mexican Norteño music into their sound. Bobby Pulido’s father was a Tejano legend (Roberto Pulido), but I think he wants to play on a bigger stage. He’s a Tejano human being, but he has chosen to market himself as a Latin Music artist. Those are both artists you can hear on our stations."

Castro adds that another problem with traditional Tejano’s aging demographic is the listeners’ tendency to flip stations. "Forty- and 50-year-olds don’t listen exclusively to one station," he says."They may listen to the Tejano station a bit, but they also listen to NPR and other stations."

Castro isn’t even sure how long the low end of the 18- to 34-year-old group will stay with all-Spanish radio.

"Today, the 18-year-old Tejano listens to rap or reggaeton," the latter of which, with its mix of hip-hop, Latin and reggae flavors, is proving a popular mix with both English- and Spanish-speaking audiences. There is no full-time reggaeton station in Austin, but it shows up on local dance music shows.

"With older Tejano musicians, there was a sense of ‘this is our music, we’re gonna show the world what we can do,’ " Castro said. "Well, we know what Latino artists can do now."

Source: Austin American-Statesman

13 Nov 05 Use of Spanish booms on network programs

November 13, 2005
By Johnny Diaz

On ABC’s new comedy ”Freddie," the Puerto Rican grandmother only speaks Spanish to her family even though she understands English perfectly. Viewers know what she says thanks to the subtitles, a weekly feature on the show.

On NBC’s ”Law and Order: SVU," Detective Olivia Benson uses her Spanish whenever she needs to interview a victim of or a witness to a sex crime who only speaks Spanish.

The same goes for the white-gloved wearing crew of ”CSI: Miami," or, last week, the FBI squad on ”Without a Trace." Subtitles let viewers follow along when a new agent, played by Roselyn Sanchez, interviewed a maid in Spanish. The episode itself was called ”Viuda Negra" — in English, ”Black Widow."

Hablas español?

The answer this TV season is a loud ”Si!"

In a country where Hispanics have grown into the largest minority, so too has the amount of Spanish on prime-time television shows. We’re not talking one-word exchanges of ”Hola" or ”por favor," but conversations in Spanish, with and without subtitles.

Programs such as ”CSI: Miami" or ”SVU" sometimes have the main characters speak Spanish because it adds an authentic touch to the shows’ settings in Miami and New York City, areas with large Latino populations. On ABC’s ”Invasion," actor Eddie Cibrian plays a Cuban park ranger who regularly taps his native Spanish to talk to fellow South Florida deputies and his bilingual children.

For sitcoms like ”The George Lopez Show" or ”Freddie," the added Spanish illustrates the challenges of living in a bicultural and bilingual household in the United States. These shows center on a nuclear Mexican-Cuban-American family in Los Angeles and an extended Puerto Rican family in Chicago.

Executive producers and advocates say having a bilingual actor is a bonus for the show and the viewers because that added skill helps cater to a growing audience of Hispanic Americans.

”More and more, the networks are beginning to understand to try and draw that audience. That is their future," says Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, an advocacy group that has been working to boost the presence of Hispanics on TV. After years of groups like his pushing for more racial diversity on prime-time TV, the actors these days aren’t just looking like the rest of America but also sounding like it too, especially this season.

Of the new 43 scripted shows this season including premieres in early 2006, at least 32 will regularly feature Latino, African-American, and Asian-American actors. Anecdotally, some of the top shows this season have or will include some type of Spanish dialogue.

Upcoming episodes of ABC’s ”Lost" will feature crash survivor Michelle Rodriguez, a Latina, speaking Spanish with Mexican-American character Hurley, played by Jorge Garcia. (The show broke ground last season when it featured a South Korean couple regularly conversing in their native language — with subtitles.)

”You have Latinos figuring into prominent leading roles," Nogales says, noting Eva Longoria on ABC’s ”Desperate Housewives" and most recently, Freddie Prinze Jr. ”The networks want to be able to capture that bilingual audience."

Of the newer crop of shows doing just that is ”Freddie." The main character, played by Prinze, is a swinging Chicago chef who takes in three generations of women, including his sister-in-law, his sister and niece, and his grandmother, played by Jenny Gago. Her role was inspired by his own Puerto Rican grandmother who would speak Spanish in her home even though she spoke English. It was an unspoken rule everyone abided by in his real family, Prinze says.

”That is a traditional Puerto Rican household," says Prinze, who was raised by his Italian mother in New Mexico after his father, the late Freddie Prinze of 1970s sitcom ”Chico and the Man," committed suicide when Freddie Jr. was 10 months old. Prinze would spend summers with his father’s side of the family in Puerto Rico, where his grandmother lives. He draws from his experiences of growing up in a mostly female household with Puerto Rican roots for the show’s story lines.

”People can speak to her in English all day but in her house, she spoke Spanish. I am just trying to portray a family and in this family, the grandmother speaks Spanish," he adds. ”That was my reality growing up."

So will the abuela character ever speak English on the show?

”No, never," says Prinze. The reaction to the show’s Spanish infusion, called innovative by some TV observers, has been positive, especially out in public, Prinze says.

”From Spanish people I run into on the street, they have a lot of pride. One guy told me that is the only show that is on a regular network where we actually see a Spanish person speaking Spanish," he adds. ”We are trying to play it for real."

Last season on ”SVU," an episode involved a little Colombian boy who witnessed his family being gunned down in their New York apartment. The boy’s character spoke Spanish when interviewed by an SVU detective played by guest star Nick Gonzalez. An episode last month called ”911" featured Detective Benson, played by Mariska Hargitay, speaking Spanish to calm a little Honduran girl who had been kidnapped and locked in a room. One scene showed Hargitay singing a Spanish nursery rhyme to the girl to keep her on the line.

”We try to make it like it may occur in real life," says Neal Baer, executive producer of ”SVU." ”Whenever it fits into the story, we try to use it. In New York City, there is a huge Puerto Rican population and a Dominican population. We try to reflect what goes on in the real world."

For the show’s producers, having a multilingual actor like Hargitay also helps writers broaden her character. Chances are when a story line involves a Hispanic character, that dialogue or scene will most likely go to Hargitay or a guest actor.

”We draw on what our actors can do," Baer says, noting that another ”SVU" actor, B.D. Wong, used his Mandarin skills in an episode last season centered in Chinatown.

Hargitay, who speaks Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian, ”is pretty amazing at what she does and that is why you see it. It doesn’t seem hokey or fake because she does speak Spanish," Baer says.

Producers say incorporating a few Spanish lines into an episode without the help of subtitles most likely wouldn’t confuse an audience of English speakers. Other characters will either talk about what was said in English or the Spanish is simple enough to follow.

”It gives a nod to our Spanish speakers without using the subtitles, which takes you out of the story," says Elizabeth Devine, co-executive producer of ”CSI: Miami," which has regularly featured characters speaking Spanish since it spun off from the original ”CSI" in fall 2002. Of the three ”CSI" series, the Miami incarnation is the one that peppers as much Spanish as it can, says Devine.

It also helps that two of the ”CSI" cast members, Adam Rodriguez and Emily Procter, are bilingual.

”One of the fun things about Miami is that everywhere you go, you hear Spanish. We try to incorporate it as we see fit," Devine says. ”We try to make it seem like a natural part of the culture."

The same goes for ABC’s ”Invasion," which is set in Homestead, Fla., after a hurricane strikes the area and brings clusters of mysterious underwater lights that affect some of the residents.

Cibrian, who plays the local park ranger, ”flows in and out of Spanish and English," on the show because his character is Cuban, says executive producer Shaun Cassidy.

”His character came from Cuba in the Mariel boat lift in 1980," Cassidy says of Cibrian, who speaks Spanish, and will continue to do so in upcoming episodes. One features him detailing his back story of when he arrived in America and his relationship with his uncle.

”He does it when the circumstances call for it," says Cassidy, who has not used subtitles on the show. ”He’s done it in four [episodes] already. Hopefully, the people who don’t speak Spanish get the intent of the scene. We have people in the scenes saying ‘What’s going on?’ so you have the audience represented there."

Prinze, who is a creator, writer, star, and executive producer of ”Freddie," is already planning for more Spanish in future episodes of his freshman sitcom. An upcoming show introduces actor Esai Morales as Freddie’s father. They chase after the same woman and then argue about her in Spanish.

Here, according to Prinze, the introduction of their native language means trouble.

”Oh you are done," Freddie’s onscreen buddy warns him. ”He broke out the Spanish."

Source: The Boston Globe

10 Nov 05 Univision to Join Nielsen’s Television Index Next Year

November 10, 2005
By Luis Clemens

Univision intends to join Nielsen’s Television Index (NTI) sometime next year, according to comments made by President and COO Ray Rodriguez during last week’s third-quarter earnings conference call. "Once we enter we believe there is great opportunity there," he said.

Doug Darfield, Nielsen senior vice president for Hispanic Services, says Univision “can be seen by 70 percent of all households in the US and they meet the definition of a network to be in the NTI. We are talking about terms." Darfield says the Nielsen Hispanic Television Index (NHTI) is scheduled to be phased out altogether in fall 2007.

"Ultimately, Univision wants to compete on the same playing field as NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox,â€? says David Flynn Huerta, managing director of Austin-based Amistad Media. “They’ve never really walked away from the ‘we are the fifth network’ positioning. That’s where the money is."

Univision has been tracking its ratings on NTI versus NHTI. "We want to make sure the NTI gives us as much audience as the NHTI,â€? Rodriguez said. “We know it is getting closer and closer. At the time that we feel that NTI is giving us a total fair count we will switch to NTI. We believe it is going to happen this year coming up." Rodriguez said the move would "be very significant to our business," citing that some of the software used by media buyers does not incorporate NHTI data, "so we don’t even exist as far as many buyers are concerned."

According to a number of industry sources, that is an overstatement. However, Flynn says, "Us [media] buyers tend to be pretty lazy and we like everything in one place."

Source: Marketing y Medios

22 Oct 05 The quest for numero uno

Do singers of Latin urban music have to record in English to hit the very top of the charts?

October 22, 2005
By Vanessa E. Jones

Spanish-language music isn’t known for shooting up the mainstream music charts. Sure, Los Del Rio enjoyed a novelty hit with ”Macarena" in 1996. Daddy Yankee found spectacular success with the song ”Gasolina," which boosted sales of the CD he released last year, ”Barrio Fino," to 834,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. And this year Shakira had luck with ”Fijacion Oral Vol. 1," which has sold 610,000 copies with the help of her crossover smash ”La Tortura." But those examples are exceptions.

The lack of hits hasn’t stopped major record labels from betting on reggaeton, the Spanish-language genre that mixes reggae and hip-hop. In the past year, a multitude of record companies have set up a bevy of new label imprints under the Latin urban music umbrella. The question dangling over reggaeton stars such as Tego Calderon, Don Omar, and Daddy Yankee as they prepare to release new albums is whether they will follow the lead of Shakira and Ricky Martin and record in English in order to make themselves palatable to a wider American audience.

”I don’t think anyone wants to do that," says DJ Buddha, a local DJ who has developed relationships with some of reggaeton’s best-selling artists through his popular mixtapes.

But Leila Cobo, Billboard magazine’s bureau chief for Miami and Latin America, doubts these artists can achieve a high level of success unless they embrace English. ”If you want to do some kind of crossover," Cobo says, ”usually you do need to have some language connection. Reggaeton is just the big exception to all the rules. And even so, these artists are doing collaborations with people who are singing in English, and that’s going to prove to be their entryway."

Using an English-speaking artist certainly helped Yankee. His hit ”Gasolina" had been slowly building a following, but the song started getting hip-hop station airplay after the release of the ”Gasolina" remix featuring Atlanta rapper Lil Jon. Yankee also sings and raps in English on the ”Barrio Fino" cut ”Like You."

The new reggaeton duo Yaga & Mackie tentatively embrace the English language on their new CD ”La Moda" by featuring guest vocals by the Spanish Harlem singing duo Nina Sky, Boston rapper and cofounder of The Source magazine Ray ”Benzino" Scott, and reggaeton stars such as Calderon, Omar, and Zion y Lennox. The duo scored CD reviews in the hip-hop magazines The Source and Vibe, and that exposure could give Yaga & Mackie the crossover boost needed to sell records to the non-Latino audience.

But the feeling among some people in the industry is that Omar, whose hit ”Reggaeton Latino" is getting heavy airplay locally on WJMN-FM (94.5) as well as in cities such as New York, Miami, and Los Angeles, will not be able to expand his audience if he continues to release solely Spanish-language songs.

”We play Don Omar," says ”Cadillac" Jack McCartney, program director at WJMN, ”but I don’t see that on a national level his songs are going to be as big as Shakira’s, only because she crosses more age spans."

Fixating on EnglishThe success of ”Fijacion Oral" followed on the heels of the English-language ”Laundry Service," the Colombian’s 2002 introduction to US audiences. The sales of that CD helped Shakira develop a broad fan base. She became mainstream enough to garner a performance berth on last month’s MTV ”Video Music Awards," where she sang ”La Tortura."

Even with the success of ”Fijacion Oral," Shakira plans to follow up that July release next month with ”Oral Fixation, Vol. 2," which will be filled with English-language songs. The move will help the artist appease the rest of her English-speaking fans.

”You certainly have people who don’t speak Spanish buying albums in Spanish," says Cobo, ”but I think they’re the exception, not the rule. I think if you went to see a concert by [the Latin rock group] Mana, and people said, ‘Oh, there were people who spoke no Spanish,’ well, yeah, there might be 20, but I’m sure it’s not half the auditorium."

Omar will also cater to the English speakers unwilling to purchase Spanish-language albums with the Nov. 22 release of his CD, ”The Hitman." The remix album will pair his hit Spanish-language reggaeton songs with a succession of popular, English-speaking hip-hop and pop artists, including Fat Joe and NORE, who appear on a remix of ”Reggaeton Latino."

”What we’re trying to do with Don Omar, since we already have a strong Latin base, is let the world know he works with mainstream artists as well, not just Latin artists," says Gus Lopez, the head of Universal Music Group’s Latin Urban label, Machete Music, which will co-release the Omar CD.

Not that everyone believes that an artist needs some element of English in order to sell well. In the case of reggaeton, the beat may just be enough. ”If you listen to Yaga & Mackie lyrically, it’s definitely all about having fun," says Gerardo Vergara, marketing director at Univision Records, the music arm of the Spanish-language television channel. ”But musically it’s something that you just can’t stop — it moves you instantly. That’s the funny thing. You wouldn’t expect Anglo people would be so open to new rhythms. You would think they would be more content driven. But in this case they buy it for the music, just the pure fun dancing flavor of it."

With more than 41 million Latinos living in this country and an international Latin audience willing to purchase the music, is the crossover audience even important for a Spanish-language artist?

”You do need it," Cobo says. ”If you’re an artist and all you want to do is play concerts, no. But if you’re a label and want to sell albums, yeah. Because Latin America is very, very pirated."

Aside from helping to foil concerns about illegally sold music, crossover status also helps artists get their CDs classified under genres broader than Latin. So instead of finding a foreign-language CD solely in the Latin music section of a record store, you can find it displayed on the bestseller rack or in the pop music section, where there’s more consumer foot traffic.

It’s the possibility of boosting waning record sales that is making music executives look hungrily at popular Spanish-language artists. According to Nielsen SoundScan, Latin albums grew almost 18 percent in the first six months of this year, compared to a decline of almost 8 percent in overall album sales during the same period. That massive jump in Latin music sales explains why Atlantic Records has signed Calderon, and why Roc-A-Fella, Wu-Tang, and Bad Boy records are among the labels setting up Latin urban imprints.

The record industry, says McCartney, is courting ”these extremely passionate artists with a smaller number of [fans]. Whereas I think before, they were trying to get the artists who are the most passionate with the most number of [fans]. [Companies] are realizing that their business of selling records is dwindling and people are much more into downloading music, so they need to constantly reinvent new ways to generate record sales."

At the same time, as the Hispanic population grows, it’s changing the face of who’s tuning into urban radio.

”It’s not like people listening to the contemporary rock station," says Cobo, ”who would probably freak out if they heard a song in Spanish. The people who listen to urban music, a lot of them are Latin anyway, even if they don’t speak Spanish all the time, so [hearing a Spanish-language song] is not alien to them."

Crossing overYet the questions linger about whether these changes will translate into genre crossing sales. Cobo wrote a story in Billboard last month about how mainstream artists such as J. Lo, R. Kelly and Alicia Keys are clamoring for reggaeton remixes of their popular songs. Keys did a reggaeton remix of her hit ”Karma." Kelly went even further, cutting the original song, ”Burn It Up" with the reggaeton duo Wisin & Yandel. The song is featured on Kelly’s ”TP.3 Reloaded."

Stations are playing reggaeton-flavored music, Cobo says, but it’s still not strong enough to chart high in the mainstream.

The payoff could be outstanding, though, for reggaeton up-and-comers Wisin & Yandel, says Lopez, president of Machete Music, which will release the duo’s Spanish-language CD, ”Pa’l Mundo," on Nov. 8. Wisin & Yandel just shot a video for ”Burn It Up" with Kelly in Chicago last month. If the video becomes popular on MTV, VH1, and BET, that exposure could give the duo’s CD a huge sales boost among Latinos and non-Latinos.

Does Cobo envision a day when a Daddy Yankee CD cracks the top five of the Billboard albums chart and a reggaeton song by Tego Calderon hits No. 1?

”If you have a proper track," says Cobo, ”and it’s really pushed, why not?"

McCartney is not quite as optimistic. ”I think [reggaeton] can do big sales; I just don’t think it will be as big as an English-speaking album in America," he says. ”At the end of the day, the same album in English and Spanish, I think if people can only buy one . . . in this country it’s more likely to be English."

Source: The New York Times via The Boston Globe

22 Oct 05 San Jose Mercury News unloads foreign language newspapers

October 21, 2005   
By Greg Sandoval

The San Jose Mercury News, a paper that has won accolades for diversifying its newsroom and trying to improve coverage of minorities, announced Friday that it will stop printing its Spanish language newspaper and is selling its Vietnamese publication after failing to make them profitable.

Their last editions as Mercury News publications will be on Nov. 11, said Mercury News Publisher George Riggs. The Viet Mercury is being sold to a group of businessmen that include a former Mercury News staffer. The sale price was not disclosed.

The Mercury News also is closing down its unprofitable zoned editions of The Guide – weekly sections on five Silicon Valley communities, Riggs said.

"While we are proud of the editorial accomplishments of both the Viet Mercury and Nuevo Mundo, as well as The Guide, in this business climate we need to turn our focus to the core Mercury News," Riggs said.

Executive Editor Susan Goldberg said the Mercury News will continue to reflect Silicon Valley’s diverse communities, both in coverage and staffing.

"Coverage of the Hispanic and Vietnamese communities always has been and remains part of our core mission in the daily Mercury News," Goldberg said.

The Viet Mercury, distributed free and with a circulation of 35,000, launched in 1999. Nuevo Mundo, also free, had a readership of 57,000. Viet Mercury became the leading Vietnamese-language paper in the area, but Nuevo Mundo was fourth among six Spanish-language competitors, Riggs said in a statement.

"We’re very saddened by the news, but we respect the business decision," Nuevo Mundo’s editor and publisher Marina Hinestrosa said Friday. "I’m very proud of our team and all the efforts we’ve accomplished in serving our community."

A group of Mercury News reporters who call themselves the Latino Coalition wrote a letter on Oct. 17 urging Riggs and Tony Ridder, chairman of the paper’s parent company, Knight Ridder Inc., to keep the ethnic papers open.

"Nuevo Mundo and its sister paper, Viet Mercury, are among the finest examples of the commitment to diversity and excellent journalism expressed by the Mercury News and Knight Ridder," the reporters wrote on Oct. 17.

The Mercury News launched Nuevo Mundo on May 3, 1996. "We want to be the newspaper for all people here," wrote Jay T. Harris, then the Mercury News publisher, on the first front page.

The thinking was that the Mercury News and its abundant resources would overwhelm the three other Spanish-language dailies: La Oferta, El Observador and Alianza Metropolitan News. But it didn’t happen.

Word of The Guide’s closure came a week after Knight Ridder announced it was acquiring Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, publisher of eight free weekly newspapers with the same coverage areas.

Higher newsprint and health costs, combined with sagging advertising revenue, has trimmed profits across the newspaper industry.

The Mercury News announced last month that it would lay off 60 employees, including 52 in the newsroom, after first offering buyouts.

The New York Times Co. said in September that it would cut 500 jobs and Knight Ridder eliminated a total of 100 positions from its two Philadelphia newspapers. In the same month, the San Francisco Chronicle accepted 90 resignations through a buyout program and said it would chop another 30 jobs.

Source: San Jose Mercury News

20 Oct 05 Entravision Radio Launches First Ever Spanish-Language ‘Play What We Want’ Radio Format

‘Jose’ to launch in Sacramento, Stockton, and Modesto, California, Albuquerque, New Mexico and Denver, Colorado

October 20, 2005
Via Yahoo! Finance

Entravision Radio, a division of Entravision Communications Corporation, announced today the launch of ‘Jose: Toca lo que Quiere,’ the first Spanish-language "Play What We Want" radio format. ‘Jose,’ who personifies everything heard between the music on the new format, will make his debut on Thursday, October 20th at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time on KRCX 99.9 FM in Sacramento and at midnight, local time, on KCVR 98.9 FM in Modesto, and KCVR 1570 AM in Stockton, California, KRZY 1450 AM Albuquerque, New Mexico and KMXA 1090 AM Denver, Colorado.

‘Jose: Toca lo que Quiere’ (he plays what he wants) targets Hispanic adults 25-54. Featuring a mix of Spanish-language adult contemporary hits from the late 1970’s to today, ‘Jose’ will air a wide variety of music from an array of artists, such as Los Bukis, Juan Gabriel, Los Yonics, Rocio Durcal, Los Tigres del Norte, Vicente Fernandez, Los Angeles Negros, Mijares, Alejandro Fernandez and more.

"Entravision Radio leads the industry by innovating and creating new Spanish-language radio formats that are just as diverse as the U.S. Hispanic market itself," said Nestor Rocha, Vice President of Programming for Entravision Radio. "We are very excited about the launch of ‘Jose’ and will continue to create Spanish-language radio formats that accommodate the different tastes of groups within the U.S. Hispanic marketplace."

"In just five short years, I’ve seen the Spanish-language radio marketplace change dramatically," said Jeffery Liberman, President of Entravision Radio. "U.S. Spanish-language radio once consisted of formats that only targeted first generation Hispanics. Our programming team has done an excellent job of creating new formats that also appeal to the diverse tastes of second and third generation Hispanics."

Entravision Radio’s programming team is responsible for creating some of the most eclectic Spanish-language radio formats heard over-the-airwaves today. The group is credited with creating the first Spanish-language pop rock and contemporary hits radio format in the United States, Super Estrella, creating a platform for artists such as Shakira, Ricky Martin and Alejandro Sanz to penetrate the U.S. Hispanic market. In addition to Super Estrella, Entravision Radio has also introduce Cumbia, a rhythmic, contemporary music genre influenced by Central/South America, Radio Tricolor, a Spanish-language country music station format and El Gato, featuring a mix of music originating from central and the gulf coast of Mexico.

18 Oct 05 L.A.’s Latino 96.3 Jumps from No. 18 to No.2

October 18, 2005
Via MediaBuyerPlanner

Los Angeles-based Spanish Broadcasting System’s (SBS) hurban KXOL (Latino 96.3) jumped from 2.0-4.2 in the first round of Arbitron ratings, Billboard Radio Monitor reports. The station moved from No. 18 to a tie for No. 2 with rival Univision’s Romantica KLVE.

Clear Channel top 40 KIIS (Kiss FM) remained No. 1 for the second straight book. Meanwhile, Emmis rhythmic top 40 KPWR (Power 106), with which SBS had a tower dispute this summer, fell from second to fourth.

18 Oct 05 Hispanic Online Advertising Network Grows by 400% This Quarter

October 17, 2005
Via PR WEB

HispanoClick, a premier Hispanic online advertising network specializing in advertising for the Spanish-speaking web, continues its growth and is working on several new branding campaigns.  This quarter, they have grown by 400%, they have added 15 new Hispanic campaigns on their online advertising network, and they recruited more than 50 new quality publishers.

With Hispanic Internet usage steadily on the rise, HispanoClick is finding unprecedented success with their online advertising network.  They provide higher click-through rates and conversion, with increased brand awareness and a greater ROI. Businesses can use HispanoClick’s services to target Hispanics on the web. 

“As the US Hispanic market continues to mature, there is more need for marketers to reach this unique audience,â€? said Mario Tenorio, former manager for Latin America at DoubleClick, now the new HispanoClick sales manager for the East Coast. 

HispanoClick’s most recent clients include Mazola Oil, which has been operating since 1911, and Bookspan, the parent company of Time Warner and Bertelsmann.

HispanoClick’s website users can access demographic profiles, Hispanic online surveys, and other facts about the Hispanic community. 

Contact Information:
Marc Duquette
HispanoClick.com
514-768-9076
mduquette@hispanoclick.com
http://www.hispanoclick.com

11 Oct 05 Hispanic Owned Publications Study Demonstrating Growth In Circulation & Ad Revenue

October 10, 2005
Via HispanicAd.com

An 80-page report detailing the strengths of publications owned by Hispanics was released during AD Week activities in New York. The report titled, The Strengths of Hispanic Owned Publications, showed that in 2004 there were 704 Hispanic newspapers with a combined circulation 16,783,321. Collectively the newspapers generated $923 million in ad revenue, a whopping 732% increase since the first 1990 figures were available. The study further show that Hispanic publications were on the rise all over the country due to increasing demand.

The study, conducted by Latino Print Network, offers research results and personal experiences from publishers, and highlights 29 benefits grouped into 4 main categories of working with Hispanic publications: Community Relationships, Reader Trust, Family Ties and Financial Viability.

Click here to download a copy of the study (Acrobat Reader required):

10 Oct 05 Border Media making noise

Houston company expands Austin office

September 30, 2005
By Chantal Outon

Tom Castro is a visionary.

Castro, president of Houston-based Border Media Partners LLC, co-founded the broadcasting company three years ago in McAllen. He since has built a mammoth Texas network of radio stations.

Border Media Partners entered the Austin market last year with the purchase of radio stations KHHL-FM 98.9, KXXS-FM 104.9 and KOKE-AM 1600, along with radio stations in Waco, Dallas and Laredo, from Irving-based Amigo Broadcasting LP. The deal was valued at $70 million.

Now with seven frequencies in Austin, most of them targeted at the Hispanic market, Border Media Partners is capitalizing on Texas’ growing Hispanic and Latino demographic.

Growing right along with that demographic is Castro’s company, which has swelled from 12 Austin employees last October to the current 81.

"We’ve run out of space in this building," Pedro Gasc, Border Media Partners’ vice president and Austin market manager, says of the company’s current 4,500-square-foot space at 2211 S. I-35. "We need to hire more people, but we just don’t have the room for them here."

Border Media Partners will have room for growth in its new 18,779-square-foot home at 912 S. Capital of Texas Highway. Move-in is scheduled for November.

Richard Paddock, office specialist with Hill Partners Inc., represented Border’s new landlord, Boston-based REIT Management.

Border Media Partners’ Austin offices and studios will take up the entire fourth floor of the Vista Ridge building, more than quadrupling its current space.

With that added space, Gasc says, the company likely will end this year with another 20 employees. He says another 40 could come aboard in 2006.

Construction has started at the new office, with BMP sinking about $2 million into remodeling, studio soundproofing and equipment to improve radio signals.

That’s a small investment compared with the $250 million that Border Media Partners has raised over the past three years.

Investors include New York-based Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group; Washington, D.C.-based Darby-BBVA Latin America Private Equity Fund LP; the family of Laredo banker Tony Sanchez, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for Texas governor in 2002; and, most recently, New York-based Vestar Capital Partners.

"For us, Austin is a top priority, along with San Antonio," Castro says.

"We’ve probably created 50 jobs in Austin in the last nine months, and spent a lot of money on research and developing formats. Now, we are focusing on business-to-business marketing to educate other Austin businesses about the buying power of the Latino market."

With 11 percent of Austin’s radio dollars targeting Hispanic listeners — the Capital City is ranked 42nd among national Hispanic radio markets, according to research company Arbitron Inc. — Border Media Partners is riding a swelling radio wave.

Mark Vanderslice, a senior associate with Hill Partners Corporate Services in Austin who represented Border Media Partners in the Vista Ridge deal, says the broadcasting company’s Austin expansion won’t end with the office improvements.

"This is going to be an extreme upgrade for Border Media," Vanderslice says. "But they might also eventually do some kind of small retail outlets, one up north and one south, but that’s still in the preliminary stages."

Other plans for Border Media Partners include live broadcasts for the company’s local Air America affiliate, and the possibility of buying more radio stations — in Texas and elsewhere.

"If the opportunity came up, we’d be interested in buying more stations," Castro says.

"We currently have about 35 in Texas, but we’re looking at other states between Texas and the West Coast as well. Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California — those are all areas we’d like to move into."

Source: Austin Business Journal

10 Oct 05 Número Uno: Spanish-language radio stations nationwide are rising to the top of their markets

October 10, 2005
By Hiram Soto

It’s midweek in the studio of "El Gallo y la Bola," the top-rated morning show of 106.5 FM "La Nueva."

Three unassuming DJs chatter away at the microphones, oblivious to the fact that their station made history in the spring when it beat such English-language radio mainstays as 600 AM KOGO and 96.5 FM KyXy. It is the first Spanish-language radio station in San Diego to reach No. 1 in the closely watched Arbitron ratings, even though it recently dropped to No. 6.

In fact, La Nueva, owned by Univision Radio, is one of the latest Spanish-language stations to climb to the top of the charts in several cities across the country.

Latino radio success can be traced to 1995, when Univision’s KLVE 107.5 FM, a Mexican regional music station, became the highest rated station in Los Angeles. Since then, other Spanish-language stations have topped the ratings in such cities as Miami, Chicago and New York.

In the last year, however, Spanish-language radio has begun beating English-language stations in smaller markets such as Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix, San Jose, El Paso, Monterey, Bakersfield and, now, San Diego.

Spanish language radio has also started making big gains in such smaller cities as Louisville, Ky.; Des Moines, Iowa; Tulsa, Okla.; Greensboro, N.C.; and Omaha, Neb.

"It’s just one of those things that 10 years ago nobody would have predicted that you would have this enormous popularity," said Mark Powers, vice president of the California Broadcasters Association.

"There is a sense that Spanish-language radio stations are challenging the general market," he said. "Everybody is rethinking the way they do business countrywide, but specially in California."

At play is an estimated $700 billion in Latino purchasing power, a young population with evolving buying preferences, and people who listen to the radio an average of 3.5 hours more per day than the general market, according to Arbitron. Companies spent more than $650 million in Spanish-language radio ads in 2004, up 6 percent from the previous year, according to the National Association of Hispanic Advertisers. Another study released in June by Bendixen & Associates suggests that 87 percent of Hispanic adults use Spanish-language media.

Clear Channel, the largest owner of U.S. radio stations, last year began converting between 20 and 25 of their English-language stations to Spanish, helping push the number of Spanish stations in the U.S. to 750 of the 14,000 stations nationwide.

So far, it has worked for Clear Channel.

One year after hitting the airwaves, some of these stations outranked all English-language stations or significantly improved their ratings in such cities as Santa Maria, Monterey, Bakersfield and Santa Barbara. Stations in San Jose, Las Vegas and Atlanta quintupled their average quarter-hour share, a key measure to advertisers. "This confirms that the numbers we have seen in the census and in the growth of the Latino population are real," said José López Varela of the National Association of Hispanic Advertisers.

The popularity of Spanish-language radio "is the sum of all these numbers, and it makes all of this very difficult to ignore, even though there are still companies that do not believe they need to advertise in Spanish, but that is something they are going to pay for in 10 or 15 years," López said.

Each week brings news about a new station in Spanish, a corporation buying a station, or some type of milestone in Hispanic radio.

Some examples:

The first Spanish-language FM radio station in Milwaukee began operating Sept. 16, Mexican Independence Day. The station is called "La gran D. La más mexicana." In July, Univision Radio’s KESS FM 107.9 became the first Spanish station to reach No. 1 in the Arbitron ratings in the Dallas-Fort Worth market.

In June, the Viejas Indian Band paid $7.5 million to buy a half interest in a San Diego company that operates, among other stations, 105.7 FM "La Pantera."

In April, Radio Kañón 1460 AM became the first Spanish-language radio station to operate in Indiana.

Spain’s multinational media conglomerate Grupo Prisa in April purchased the rights to operate XTRA AM 690, a Mexican radio station with a strong signal in San Diego. The company, which spent $28 million on XTRA, plans to build a network of Spanish-language radio stations across the United States.

Many callers

In San Diego, blinking red lights at the "La Nueva" studio tell the story of perpetually clogged phone lines. On that day, only a handful of calls actually got through the mostly musical show, which plays Mexican stars such as Vicente Fernández and Ramón Ayala.

One caller was a recovering cancer patient who wanted to donate expensive medicine to a fellow listener. Another was someone who lost a "green card" in La Jolla. Another one was a furious driver whose car had been hit while crossing the border in San Ysidro.

Trivial matters to some.

But for José "El Gallo" Gadea, the show’s 42-year-old charismatic star, the calls are nothing less than the pulse of the San Diego Latino community.

"The key to our success has been to really understand how the Latino community thinks and feels," Gadea said. "To know how Latinos speak and what their concerns are and how they express them."

According to industry experts, Spanish-language radio can be popular even in places such as San Diego, – where the Latino population stands at about 30 percent – because Latinos listen to the radio long hours while they work.

"You can have less people listening to you, but they are listening for a longer period of time, and that counts," said Adam Jackson, an editor of Radio & Records, a radio media company.

Latino radio also registers high in the Arbitron ratings because of the quantity and fragmentation of English-language radio stations. That makes it easier for Spanish-language radio stations to compete, they say.

In the San Diego-Tijuana region, there are about 40 AM and FM radio stations that are tracked by Arbitron. About 10 of them offer Spanish-language content.

Aside from "La Nueva," which has dropped to sixth place in the most recent ratings, Univision Radio also owns KLQV FM 102.9 "Viva," which currently occupies the 25th position. Other Spanish-language radio stations in San Diego are XHTY FM 99.7 "La invasora," with the 23rd position, and XLTN FM 104.5 "Radio Latina," in 26 place.

Spanish-language radio is also breaking up in different genres, offering radio listeners new variations.

Although the regional Mexican music format dominates the market, Spanish-language radio stations are now offering new genres, such as hip-hop and regaetton. Clear Channel came up with its own name for the genre, calling it "Hurban," for Hispanic Urban.

"Much like general-market radio did about 15 years ago, Hispanic radio is breaking off into new formats and subgenres of existing ones," said Stacie de Armas of Arbitron’s Hispanic marketing division.

"This changes the radio landscape," she said.

Spanish-language radio’s popularity is being mirrored in television, with Univision being the biggest player. In the last few months, the network has been inching past English-language networks to become the fifth most watched network in the country.

In New York, the biggest radio and TV market, Univision’s affiliate made history in August when it became the most watched station in town. In L.A., Univision is frequently the most watched TV station.

In radio, Univision is also el rey.

The L.A.-based company is the biggest Spanish-language media company in the United States, with a portfolio that includes several channels, record companies, artists and 66 radio stations in some of the biggest markets.

Univision, however, is seeing increasing competition from companies such as Clear Channel, Entravision, Infiniti Broadcasting and ABC Radio Networks, which recently announced that it will syndicate sports programming and ESPN Deportes.

Beyond the fierce competition expected in the years to come, the stations will also face the daunting task of drawing faithful listeners such as Rosa Gómez, the cancer patient who called to donate her medicine to a fellow "La Nueva" listener.

"I’ve been listening to ‘La Nueva’ for many years because ‘El Gallo’ is a person who emanates trust. He’s a person who has good feelings, and he is always trying to help the community," she said. "That’s why I listen to them, and that’s why I always feel free to call."

Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune

10 Oct 05 Reaching Latinos: Agencies Update Ad Approach

Creativity, Sensibility Are What Matter as Latino, Anglo Firms Vie

October 10, 2005
By Eliot Tiegel

Hispanic ad agencies are responding to the cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity of the nation’s exploding Hispanic population with a new wave of creative concepts in TV commercials.

Those include more precisely targeted ads, more contemporary story lines and a greater use of hip new musical styles, all designed to connect with young Hispanic adults. Generic 30-second spots are also being updated to appeal to acculturated second- and third-generation bilingual Latinos.

While Spanish-language marketers are dealing with these creative alterations, they are also under siege from major Anglo agencies, which seek to siphon away growing Hispanic media budgets. "I’m not really threatened," said Mauricio Galvan, The Vidal Partnership’s VP and creative director, "but it’s also a mistake to feel safe." Of the encroachment, Catarino Lopez, chief creative officer for San Antonio-based Bromley Communications, contends agencies specializing in Spanish-language ad campaigns are better qualified to deal with the complexity of the marketplace, but adds the caveat: "I don’t feel threatened but at the same time, it’s a sign of the times."

An additional issue is how to reach bilinguals. "There’s a debate over whether we need English-only ads to target this audience," said Court Stroud, Azteca America’s senior VP of sales and marketing. "Hispanics tend to respond more passionately to Spanish-language television," he said. Agency executives emphasize this point by noting the hard line taken by market leader Univision, which carries only Spanish-language commercials.

Whether doing a generic or a regional spot, the key story line elements have to be emotional and insightful, stressed Jose Molla, owner and creative director of Miami’s La Comunidad, which walked away with a record six honors at Advertising Age’s seventh annual Hispanic Creative Advertising Awards ceremonies in New York, held Sept. 30 in conjunction with a meeting of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies.

A commercial for Citibank revolved around the concept that money plays a particularly important and specific role in the lives of immigrant Hispanics. "They make sacrifices and send money back to their families, and that’s a big deal. It also shows they’re doing well," Mr. Molla said. Casting commercials in Miami, where the agency is located, is a problem "because the talent pool is very small. So most of the time we go to L.A. or New York. It’s hard to find talented actors who speak perfect Spanish in the U.S."

Unlike other agencies, La Comunidad rarely does regional spots focused on a specific ethnicity. "If it’s a national product, we try to use neutral Spanish, which means no slang. If the spot is for Mexicans, we go deeper into their language and, of course, cast Mexican actors," Mr. Molla said.

He said that the 2000 U.S. Census, which revealed the extent of the Hispanic population and its spending power, stimulated mainstream agencies to go after Hispanic media budgets. "There’s always this dynamic where you have to prove your work and prove you are the best way to reach the Hispanic market," Mr. Molla said.

Powerhouse New York agency The Vidal Partnership responds to the challenge from mainstream agencies by stressing to clients that "It takes much more than a few people" to deal with the complexities of the nation’s diverse Hispanic community, said Mauricio Galvan, the agency’s VP and creative director. The agency was the recipient of three Advertising Age Hispanic Creative Advertising Awards.

Mr. Galvan said Hispanic agencies are best attuned to dealing with the modern image of U.S. Hispanics, whose mixture of Spanish and English cultures places them in "two worlds." The challenge is to find the right formula of story line, graphics and music that connects with their backgrounds and lifestyles, he said.

"When we cast actors, we’re looking for the way they act and dress," he said. "The pool is not as big as for the general market, so it’s very common to see the same actors at casting calls" and the same faces showing up on the screen. "The visuals can be fast-paced or slow, depending on the idea," he added.

Heineken, Mr. Galvan noted, wants music relevant to the target audience, staying away from "mainstream Latin music" in favor of "being a little bit underground." One Heineken commercial used classical music. Mr. Galvan said Vidal stays away from trends "because people see them over and over" and they lose their freshness.

The Vidal Partnership shoots the majority of its commercials in Los Angeles, Miami and New York. Argentina and Mexico have also been locales for a client list that includes DirecTV, MasterCard, Home Depot, Nissan and Heineken. A 30-second spot can cost from $300,000 to $900,000. The award-winning 2004 total-darkness "Blackout" spot for Heineken cost "less than $10,000," Mr. Galvan said.

English or Spanish?
How do marketers reach bilingual Hispanics? One way is to create a commercial for Anglo TV, said Bromley Communications’ Mr. Lopez. "It’s fair game to go after Hispanics in English. People like myself tend to navigate in both cultures. We’ve done spots for Coors targeting the Mexican consumer in Spanish and gone after young males in Spanish and English for Burger King. Two key outlets for English are Telemundo’s mun2 network and SíTV."

Today’s commercials are aimed to a lesser degree at Hispanics whom Mr. Lopez calls "one-dimensional," and more at a person who has lived in the U.S. a bit longer, is a little more educated and lives in two cultures. "Everything used to be pan-Hispanic," Mr. Lopez said, "with a neutral accent. Now it’s OK to show someone with a dialect from Argentina, Colombia, Cuba and Mexico. We’re getting away from stereotypical themes. Music is no longer just mariachi or flamenco guitar. We use reggaeton (a currently popular mixture of rap with Jamaican reggae and electronic instruments) in some instances … throw in a jazz or techno beat."

Finding new faces to reflect the broadened Latin society is often challenging. "While the market is growing," Mr. Lopez said, "the talent pool isn’t. We’re going out on the street, trying to turn over rocks to find new talent. By filming in Mexico and South America, even in Canada, it opens our casting opportunities. When we do casting calls, actors tend to be of light skin. But now we’re seeing a little bit of diversity from people with an Afro or Caribbean background."

The modern Latin culture is driving major trends in Spanish-language commercials, said Hector Orci, CEO, co-founder and co-chair of La Agencia de Orci & Asociados in Los Angeles. "There’s less storytelling and more vignettes and a lot more humor," Mr. Orci said. "There’s less creative barriers, more musical styles which are not generational, visuals whose modern editing goes beyond cuts and dissolves and production budgets which in the last five years are up 25 to 50 percent. There’s also a tendency to be more sexual in dress and behavior."

The Orci agency works in both Spanish and English for clients American Honda, Verizon, Allstate and Johnson & Johnson. "If it’s more than one cast, that’s what it is; we don’t do any overdubs," Mr. Orci said. English-language spots are run on local channels, selected markets on the cable networks, S%ED;TV and on UPN and Fox, which have shows that register a high viewing index among Latinos.

Gary Bassell, The Bravo Group’s chairman and CEO, is philosophical about the creative trends in advertising. "Our biggest movement is looking beyond our culture to broader things like the human truth," the New York executive said. "The challenge has always been finding the ‘universal touch points.’ In the early years, we were paid to differentiate differences [from the mainstream market] and now we’re looking for things we share in common."

Mr. Bassell, the former president and founding partner of La Comunidad, speaks of seeking "human insight rather than the Latino insight," looking for behavior that’s common to more than one segment of the Latino population.

"Every marketer is trying to address this challenge, opportunity or problem their brand faces. We kind of pushed ourselves into this corner where everything had to be about our culture," Mr. Bassell said. "We can walk away from an approach that’s always defined us for three decades, where all advertising did was hold up a mirror to the Latino consumer and said, ‘We recognize what defines you.’ Now we’re looking beyond being Hispanic to define what makes us a consumer."

Azteca America’s Mr. Stroud appreciates the greater emphasis on special effects in commercials, "which makes them look high-tech and like video games," he said. Video games are a new product category for the 4-year-old network, and they indicate that the youth market is watching Spanish-language television, Mr. Stroud said.

Mr. Stroud believes that modern technology is also a growing factor in product placement, with virtual reality imagery augmenting the actual placement of products within a show.

"Our company has a 12-year history of product placement in Mexico (on the parent TV Azteca network)," he said. That experience has translated to the U.S. market and been enhanced by new technological capabilities.

"We’ve dropped in virtual Kmart shopping bags in novelas after the shows have been shot," Mr. Stroud said. "We’ve placed virtual Gain detergent on the set of a novela for Procter & Gamble. We’ve created virtual sets for General Motors during soccer coverage so they look like they own halftime, [and] we’ll have Colgate products on the set of our ‘La Academia USA’ [a Spanish-language version of 'American Idol']."

Despite the Hispanic community’s cultural and ethnic diversity, Mr. Stroud believes generic spots can appeal to a wide audience "if you find common-ground themes like mother, family, food, friendship and fond memories. That commonality can be used in a warm and fuzzy way" to reach people with different backgrounds, he said.

Commercials airing on Fox Sports en Español must be within the network’s boundaries of decency, eschew cheesecake and be targeted to adults, especially males. "The creative is not especially for sports, but rather to reach the Spanish consumer," explained Tom Maney, the network’s senior VP of sales. The products traditionally favored by male audiences-cars, beer and soft drinks-are being augmented by cellular phone manufacturers and service providers, quick-serve restaurants, consumer electronics product manufacturers and retailers and insurance companies.

The biggest time buys go to soccer, the network’s most popular sport, followed by baseball and boxing.
"While we’re a single-feed, Spanish-dominant programmer, some advertisers do produce a regional creative for spot TV, which can be part of a total rotation," Mr. Maney said.

Source: TelevisionWeek