As Yolanda Foster strode through the makeshift studio for Mun2's de facto launch event in Hollywood this September, the Telemundo Cable exec reminded her cast and crew of the event's real goal. ?Guys,? she announced, ?just listen [to the audience].?
In the year since Mun2 (pronounced ?moon dose?) went live, Cuban-born Foster and her team of producers and marketers have done a lot of listening, trying to find the right mix of programming to attract young, American-born Latinos. Last month's event (the actual launch celebration was scrapped last September in the wake of the 9/11 attacks), billed ?Xpress It,? was positioned as a town hall meeting where various Latino stars discussed media portrayals of Latinos. But, for almost all, this was far more than a show.
?This is the launch we never had,? Foster admitted.
This would also be the chance to articulate exactly what Mun2 hopes to be.
Watch and listen to the station closely these days and you'll get what Foster's talking about: homegrown Latin hip-hop and rock bands, Hispanic-American presenters and lots of English and Spanglish banter. It's a dramatic departure for NBC-owned Telemundo, the No. 2 broadcaster of Spanish-language programming in the U.S.
But behind all the talk is an effort to trace the path of successes seen at MTV and, more recently, BET.
?What BET is to African-Americans, Mun2 will be to Latinos,? Foster says. ?The challenge is in educating advertisers and convincing them this is a viable market.?
Conventional wisdom has long held that to reach Latinos, one must speak Spanish. In almost two decades Telemundo and Univision have amassed sprawling empires by reaching immigrants with homegrown novelas, news and entertainment. Mainstream marketers, too, have woken up to the promise of the Hispanic market in the U.S., wooing America's 35 million Latinos with Spanish marketing slogans and programs.
Selling those same marketers on an English-speaking Hispanic audience is essentially starting from scratch ? and will likely be the biggest challenge facing Mun2.
?There's a monumental amount of research on one side of the fence that says you need to speak Spanish,? says Joe Bernard, director of sales and marketing at Urban Latino Media Group, Mun2's marketing partner. ?The funny part is the Latinos telling you this are all saying it in English.?
But there's far more to Latinos than Spanish, and young Hispanics are stressing that fact. They are the fastest-growing segment of Hispanics in America, comprised mainly of second- and third-generation Latinos who are bilingual, bicultural and looking for something different. Generally speaking, they are neither drawn to Spanish-language fare, nor connected to programming produced abroad. But these young people are also becoming the most educated segment of Hispanics and are rapidly becoming the most affluent as well.
By sheer numbers alone, they're having a notable effect on communities around them. While the median age of Hispanics is 24, fully two-thirds of those under 24 are born in the U.S. and are bilingual. And their ranks are growing faster than any other group in America ? by 2005, one out of every five children in America will be Hispanic. In locales like Los Angeles, that proportion is expected to reach upwards of 80%.
But what really sets this generation apart from other second-generation immigrants is their unwillingness to assimilate. They may not speak as much Spanish, but their culture is very important to them. Unlike previous generations of immigrants who gave up most vestiges of their culture, young Latinos today are happy to keep a foot in both worlds. Speaking Spanish is no longer a shame, while speaking in English is deemed a necessity. Still, 50% of American-born Hispanics would prefer to be called American instead of Hispanic or Latino, pollster Sergio Bendixen found in a recent poll; only 20% of foreign-born Latinos choose the same.
?This is a generation that is defining its own assimilation,? stresses Jorge Reina Schement, co-director for the institute of Information Policy at Penn State University. ?It's not that they are not assimilating but that they are doing it in their own way.?
Not surprisingly, that's affecting Hispanic viewing habits. A study by Horowitz Associates earlier this year found that while three-quarters of urban Hispanics consider Spanish-language programming an important part of the mix, four out of ten prefer watching English-language TV, while almost a third had no preference for either language. Even among Spanish-dominant Hispanics, one in five said they prefer English-language programming while a third had no preference either way.
And these new TV watchers are more likely to be digital cable subscribers: a third of English-dominant Hispanics said they had picked up digital cable, and Horowitz expects that figure to reach 50% in a couple of years' time. In comparison only 10% of Spanish-dominant Hispanics have yet to sign up for digital.
Foster caught on to these kinds of changes years ago. The VP of programming at Telemundo cut her teeth at the CBS affiliate and at the CBS network in Miami and later at Hispanic women's network GEMS. She saw the opportunity to reach young Hispanics mainly because she was one of them. ?I understood the general market and what these kids go through,? she says. ?I'm Latina but I didn't watch the novelas. We spoke English at home, and we didn't watch much Latin TV.?
Ironically, the chance to do something different came in the guise of Telemundo, which acquired GEMS from Cox Communications and Venezuelan media company Empresas 1-BC for $39 million in late 2000. Foster and Telemundo Cable president Manuel Abud soon began rethinking the idea behind GEMS, which targeted Hispanic women in Latin America and in the U.S., but had little awareness and no real brand. ?We wanted young, especially young males,? Foster says. ?And young viewers [said they] wanted TV that reflects them.?
The best reflection was a network for young people emphasizing urban culture and cool, hip values. But to launch it, they had to present at upfront in May, less than five months away by the time Foster and Abud were talking. The team hired Miami-based entertainment branding firm Blanco-Lorenz Entertainment to build a new brand that evokes the sense of a new world while harking back to Telemundo's roots. Foster and her team set out to define the kind of programming needed, all while setting GEMS on autopilot. About two months later, Telemundo presented the blueprint for the new channel in a one-minute spot at upfront, with plans to launch on Sept. 16 with a marketing blitz. Sept. 11 scrapped all those plans, but Mun2 still went live ? with little fanfare ? in a soft launch Oct. 10.
?We simply didn't know how much time we were going to need, so we went soft and let it grow organically,? Foster says.
In the process, the channel turned to some novel marketing ideas to get the word out on a shoestring budget. Take, for example, Mun2's student internship program called UMun2, launched this summer. The effort roped in viewers on college campuses to set up events, hand out fliers and talk up the network, all for college credit. Students are each given assignments that match their majors and are given the opportunity to get involved in the network's runnings. In some cases, the interns have helped produce more extensive content like Street Hacker, which presents local activities and Mochileando (Backpacking), a series about students traveling off the beaten trail. Such efforts especially pushed Mun2's name in smaller markets where it simply couldn't advertise.
Mun2 isn't the first to focus on bilingual youth programming. In 2000 Galavision, Univision's cable property, launched two weekday prime-time blocks of bilingual programming in an effort to reach out to the 12-to-24 demographic. The move sparked controversy both within the company and in the Spanish broadcasting world, especially given Univision's strict ban on English-language programming and advertising messages. When the shows aired, several long-time viewers reportedly called to complain. Nonetheless, several English and Spanglish shows continued until spring 2002, when the effort was scrapped and Univision went back to its bread-and-butter audience of 18- to 49-year-olds. The move is said to have been purely financial, as Univision sought to rebroadcast Televisa content rather than produce original material.
?A lot of people think that by importing programming, that will be enough,? says Lucia Ballas-Traynor, former GM at Galavision. ?But Latino youth in America are typically urban and very different from youth in Latin America.?
Despite the cancellation, Ballas-Traynor notes, the Galavision effort did pave the way for the new category of Latino youth programming. The effort was even starting to have some success in getting advertisers to accept the idea.
?It takes two or three years to grow a category,? Ballas-Traynor says. ?There was no such thing as English programming aimed at Latinos before.?
And now there is. Much of Mun2's programming has largely been imported youth programming in Spanish with a sprinkling of English chat and music shows. But Foster says more homegrown material in English is showing up and she estimates that the bulk of programming will be in English or Spanglish by the new year. For those who relish Spanish, there will also be Spanish content, but no programming will be dubbed or subtitled, she insists. Mun2 also opened a bureau in L.A. to better round out its content and develop a more bicoastal feel, a move expected to produce even more original content and better reflect Hispanics in the west.
Critics say Mun2 must do more in that regard. They point to a crowd that so far reflects an East Coast, Caribbean-culture despite the fact that the largest proportion of American Latinos are Mexican. Even the music and dialects used on air are more reflective of Cuban, Puerto Rican or Venezuelan natives. For her part, Foster emphasizes that this was exactly why ?Xpress It? was produced and filmed in Los Angeles rather than Miami.
Others, meanwhile, question whether Mun2 can attract a young Latino Audience 24 hours a day. Indeed, Ballas-Traynor herself wonders how well such material can be managed. ?To me, the business model is not there. This is a business and you're competing with lots of other channels,? she notes.
For now, Mun2's biggest battle is in distribution. The channel is currently in 18 of the top 20 Hispanic markets, with Chicago and Washington, D.C., missing from its base, says Laura Dergal, Mun2's director of marketing. In total, the channel can reach 2.9 million Hispanic households and 5.2 million general market homes on digital cable. Mun2's marketers expect those figures to grow notably by the end of 2003.
Mun2's biggest guns in that effort are Telemundo and parent NBC, which acquired Telemundo last October for $2.9 billion. Both have been working to push Mun2 with cable operators, making a case for the channel's importance in the overall mix. Meanwhile both have also been making their sales staff available and cross promoting Mun2. In theory, says Foster, the cooperation will help Mun2 get spots tailored to younger audiences from clients also seeking to reach Telemundo's older viewers. NBC's clout with major brands also promises to funnel corporate clients that may have otherwise shied away.
?We see Mun2 as a mirror of a wave happening in this culture,? says Mark Hotz, VP of marketing at NBC Cable Networks. ?As long as they continue to focus on reflecting where they are and want to be, we can only win.?
Indeed, NBC has high hopes for Mun2, betting the channel will give NBC a wider entry into the youth markets. In fact, Hotz sees a day when there will be enough English spoken on Mun2 that even non-Hispanics will begin watching it. And perhaps then, the channel will have the kind of presence that BET developed.
For the time being, at least, the synergy between Telemundo and Mun2 has many possibilities for Hispanics themselves.
?How perfect for Telemundo to focus on the first- and second-generation Hispanics, and Mun2 can focus on the third,? says Foster. ?They got the parents and we got the kids.?
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