With baseball's postseason now in full swing, Hispanic TV viewers have a choice. They can watch English-language broadcasts of the games on Fox. Or go to Fox Sports en Español on cable for a Spanish-language telecast, complete with announcers like former major leaguer Tito Fuentes.
When you're one of the fastest-growing population segments in the country ? and one with exploding spending power ? choices are what you get.
When it comes to providing those choices, the programmers at cable networks are racing to deliver what Hispanic viewers want to see. There are new Spanish-language networks in the works from major players like ESPN and Scripps Networks. And even a smaller player like The Inspiration Networks, which launched the Hispanic service La Familia earlier this year, pledges to add a new original program in Spanish every week through the end of the year.
All of this attention paid to Spanish-language programming flies in the face of what had been conventional wisdom only a few years ago. Then the thought was that Hispanic-Americans ? especially the younger, more successful members of the second and third generations of families here ? would grow less dependent on Spanish-language media.
?When I got here 15 years ago, people used to say Hispanic marketing is going to disappear as those Hispanics acculturate,? said Ingrid Otero Smart, managing partner at the Hispanic ad agency Mendoza Dillon and president of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies.
One reason that never happened, Smart believes, is the continuing influx of new immigrants. But even Hispanics who've been in the United States for some time and who generally turn to English-language media must turn to Spanish-language media to hear news from their countries of origin.
?The majority of us have family and friends back there, so we want to know what's going on,? Smart said. ?That's never going to change.?
Even among bilingual Hispanics, Spanish-language advertising ?seems to be not just more relevant but more effective in motivating them to buy or to purchase a certain brand,? she added.
And it takes more than simply speaking in Spanish. The message has to be culturally relevant. Smart points out that you see more families in Hispanic spots than in general market spots. You also see less talk about convenience and more talk about taste and quality.
?If we reach them in Spanish with a commercial that's also culturally relevant, then of course, we're going to have more effective communication,? she said.
And that guarantees support for Spanish-language TV.
To be sure, millions of Hispanic viewers watch the most popular English-language programming. But their preferences are markedly different from general market viewers.
ABC's sitcom The George Lopez Show, the 70th-ranked show in prime time during the first seven months of the last TV season, jumps into the top ten in both Spanish-dominant and bilingual homes, according to an analysis of Nielsen data by the ad agency BBDO.
It might be more surprising to find the three top-rated English-language programs in Spanish dominant homes are WWF Smackdown, The Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle.
In English/bilingual homes, Friends and ER are at the top of the list. Some top-rated shows like Everyone Loves Raymond and Law & Order slide out of the top five but stay in the top 20, while lower-ranked shows like Bernie Mac, Wonderful World of Disney and Love Cruise climb up into the top 20.
Some cable programs attract more Hispanic viewers than others. According to a survey conducted earlier this year by Mediamark Research, viewership of channels such as MTV2, MuchMusic, Toon Disney, BET, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon indexed higher in Hispanic homes. Meanwhile, channels like CMT, QVC, Hallmark, TV Land and Golf Channel indexed lower.
Having noticed that sports and animation index high in Hispanic households, Turner Broadcasting has begun to create Spanish-language feeds using the SAP channel for some of its programming. Most of its Cartoon Network and Boomerang shows have SAP feeds in Spanish. This season it ran 90 regular-season Braves games on TBS with separate Spanish-speaking announcers. This fall, it will have Spanish-speaking announcers covering its Big 12 and Pac 10 college football broadcasts. And TNT will put a Spanish-language SAP feed on its 52 regular season NBA basketball games.
?People say that's a pretty rich bouquet of programming for the Hispanic household,? said Coleman Breland, SVP of marketing and sales, Turner Network Sales. ?And then our group here says, now how do we maximize that for affiliates? What can we put in the field to help them respond or to show the importance and relevance of television programming to the Hispanic household in their offerings??
In the spring, Turner tried to capitalize on its baseball offering with the Home Run marketing campaign aimed at helping cable operators add Hispanic subscribers. Turner provided about 50 systems with direct-mail brochures touting the availability of Spanish-language audio during Braves games, and on Cartoon Network and Boomerang, plus CNN en Español and HBO Latino. The promotion also threw in free issues of People en Español.
Breland said the offer helped draw 10,000 new subscribers and that response was enough to prompt another campaign, this one called Slam Dunk. The new promotion will be similar to Home Run, but will tout the TNT SAP feed on NBA games instead of Braves games. Turner sent out the information to affiliates last month, and 15 systems are already signed up.
?It's an acquisition and an upgrade campaign, depending on how you want to use it,? Breland said. Turner will provide affiliates with a database of Hispanic households without cable, plus print the customized brochures. It will pay half the postage and contribute, if the operator also runs newspaper ads. ?It seems like one of the most effective things we can do for those affiliates who have a high number of Hispanics in their service area.?
SAP isn't enough for Fox Sports en Español, according to GM David Sternberg.
This month, ?We are gearing up for our second year of exclusive Spanish-language coverage of the Major League Baseball postseason,? he said. In addition to game coverage, the network will have pre- and postgame shows and live remotes for the Spanish-speaking audience.
Fox offered similar coverage last year and drew a very positive response from viewers who liked seeing the games in Spanish. And not just in a SAP version on a general market broadcast, but really a Spanish-language telecast with Spanish-language graphics, commentators and on-site reports.
Sternberg said the network's deal with Nielsen prohibited disclosing ratings. ?We were very, very pleased with the response from focus groups, from individual viewers who wrote in to us or called in, from cable affiliates, who were very excited about it and some of the co-promotions that we do with them,? Sternberg said. ?And not least of all the advertising community, which really came out in force last year and has increased its commitment to the broadcasts this year.?
Fox's advertisers include MasterCard, Mobil, General Motors, Toyota, Radio Shack, Tecate Beer and Smirnoff Ice. Sternberg said the channel soon will be close to a sellout position.
Fox is launching a marketing campaign to increase viewership and drive subscriber take-up where the channel is on a digital tier. The campaign will appear in markets with large Hispanic populations: Los Angeles, San Jose, Fresno, Miami, New York, Dallas-Ft. Worth and El Paso.
In addition to baseball and soccer, sports traditionally popular with Hispanics, Fox Sports is revving up coverage of auto racing. Since June it's been airing a highlights show covering the NASCAR Busch series.
Sternberg said there is already a base of Hispanic racing fans, but he expects it to grow. ?There's no shortage of corporate sponsors in NASCAR,? he noted. ?And the footprint geographically of NASCAR is spreading into places like Southern California and Texas and Illinois and Miami and other markets where there are quite a few Latinos.?
Also upping its efforts in Spanish-language programming is ESPN, which last month announced plans to launch ESPN Deportes, a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week Spanish-language sports channel, in the third quarter of 2003.
ESPN has been offering operators a three-hour Sunday night block of Spanish programming including Major League Baseball games and NFL football for three years that reached more than 13 million homes.
?We thought this was the logical next step,? said Sean Bratches, EVP, affiliate sales and marketing at ESPN. ?Our customers were asking us for it, consumers, or fans, were asking us to do this, rights holders were asking us to do this and our national advertisers were asking us to do this.?
The new channel will have baseball, NBA basketball, European soccer, college football from Mexico and a Spanish-language version of Sports-Center.
?There is a lot of research that suggests there is a lot of interest, even among English-speaking Hispanics in the television genre, to seek and have their own channels and to have them displayed in their native language,? Bratches said.
And it's not just sports programmers that are looking to add Hispanic offerings. MTV and Discovery already have Spanish-language services. And Scripps Networks has one in the works.
?We've done research that has shown us that the U.S. Latino viewers in this country are looking for the same variety of programming options as are available to the general population,? said Kristen Jordan, VP of international development for Scripps Networks. ?Right now their choices in television programming are somewhat limited. So we've also learned that these viewers would like to see the same production values that are associated with English-language programming available to them as well.?
Scripps's networks include lifestyle-oriented channels HGTV, Food Network and DIY. ?We have done a lot of research with focus groups and have gotten a very, very strong response ? almost a grateful response ? to the idea of us producing a lifestyle network created specifically for U.S. Latinos, one that would address the concerns that we all have for learning information about topics that can enhance your life,? Jordan said.
Scripps has not added SAP feeds to its current English-language channels. ?What we've learned is that it is probably more important that the programs be produced in such a way that they reflect the rich cultural tradition of Latinos,? she said. ?Somewhat secondary to that is the Spanish language.?
Among those cultural touchstones, Jordan said, is respect for community and family. Further, she added, ?Hispanics have design traditions, culinary traditions, that will be reflected in this network.?
Some operators, including AT&T Broadband and Cox, are trying to sell local ads in Spanish to go with this new programming. But getting large advertisers to buy in may take time.
?On cable we would typically buy national cable. So if we bought Galavision, we would buy the network,? said Lisa Taylor, associate media director at Mendoza Dillon. ?Now that may be changing as several of our clients are becoming interested in what we call these emerging Hispanic markets, which are basically your nontraditional markets that one may not think is high Hispanic density.?
Taylor said the Northeast, for example, has become very popular for some of the agency's packaged-goods clients. ?In the future, looking at doing local spots on Spanish-language cable may be an option for us,? she said. ?But we're not quite there yet.?
Of course, the traditional leaders in Hispanic TV are hardly standing still. Broadcast leader Univision in April launched a new programming lineup for Galavision, the top-rated Spanish-language cable service. In the second quarter, Galavision more than doubled its daytime audience among adults 18 to 49, and in prime time viewership among adults 18 to 49 rose 47% (including a 117% jump in viewing by women in the demographic).
The new Galavision schedule builds on its Mexican League soccer games with a group of new talk, variety and live news shows. And Univision has five more cable channels on the drawing board to launch in the fourth quarter for what the company perceives as a still-underserved U.S. Hispanic community. Univision, in a statement, said the new channels will include a classic movie channel, a Latin movie channel and three distinct Latin music and lifestyle channels.
At the same time, Univision's competitor, NBC's Telemundo, also has a new cable channel, the year-old Mun2 (see page 32). Mun2 is taking a different approach with programming aimed at younger Hispanics with a mix of Spanish and English. Mun2 sees several English-language channels as its competition to reach these younger Hispanics. Some of Mun2's advertising is in Spanish; some is in English. Since parent Telemundo handles ad sales for Mun2, the network is reaching Spanish-language agencies.
Mark Hotz, VP of NBC Cable Networks, said that in addition to changing patterns in language usage, Hispanics are changing geographically. ?Not only has their population doubled in key markets where you obviously know where they are, but they've moved into North Carolina and Georgia and Idaho and Illinois and all of these other regional areas that people wouldn't perceive them being in. So obviously marketers and cable operators said, ?Wow, I've got to really look at this huge influx of this culture in my community,?? he said.
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