| September 21, 2007
BY ED MORALES
"I watch telenovelas with my mom sometimes," said 23-year-old Norma Guevara, the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants. "Even my dad gets into those things. But I'm like, 'Daddy, I know the ending already, okay?' Spanish TV is just not interesting to me anymore."
Listen to Guevara of South Plainfield, and you'll get the sense that young Latinos -- the fastest growing segment of the U.S. Hispanic population -- are bored with Spanish-language TV.
But look at Nielsen Media Research's Top 10 television programs watched by Hispanics for the week of Sept. 10, and you'd think Spanish-language TV is the only game in town. The top five programs listed include different episodes of the telenovela "Destilando Amor," and all 10 are broadcast on the same network, Univision.
"Most of the images of Latinos in television these days are either on Spanish-language television, which imports telenovelas from Latin America, or sparingly, on English-language television," said Robert Rose, whose Manhattan production company created the television shows "American Latino TV" and "Latination" (aired on Channel 9), geared toward young, English-dominant Latinos.
The top 10 shows for African-Americans and mainstream America, on the other hand, are almost interchangeable. "NBC Sunday Night Football," "Without a Trace," "CSI" are all there, just in slightly different ranking.
Could it be that Hispanics are that different from the rest of America?
"When you look at the census data, there's not a lot of debate," said Edward Rincón, president of Rincón & Associates, a consulting group based in Dallas. "Sixty percent of U.S. Latinos are native-born, and it's not the case that they're spending all this time watching Spanish-language media."
According to Census figures, the largest growth segment of the Hispanic population is not immigrants, but the children of immigrants -- who tend to speak more English with each generation.
The median age of U.S.-born Latinos is 18, and by 2020, those born here will constitute 75 percent of Hispanics. With estimates of U.S. Hispanic buying power at $863.1 billion in 2007, it would seem a market with a limitless potential for growth.
"In many cases, language is irrelevant," said Rincón, who teaches Hispanic marketing as a professor at Southern Methodist University. "It can change in different situations and may not have anything to do with television viewing. Nativity is a much more important factor."
After pressure from the networks and advertisers, Nielsen announced last month it was discontinuing a separate service to measure the size of Hispanic TV audiences. The firm will cull its information from the 1,400 Hispanic households with people meters, up from about 500 used in the separate study (out of 12,000 homes nationwide).
The move was made with much at stake -- over $3 billion was spent on advertising in Spanish-language TV last year. According to Hispanic Business Magazine's HispanTelligence research service, more than 90 percent of of advertising money spent in the U.S. targeted to Hispanic consumers goes to Spanish-language television.
Until recently, major corporations have been satisfied with the idea that Hispanic consumers are covered by advertising on Spanish-language television, Rose said.
While middle-class, multi-dimensional characters have cropped up on shows like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," observers, including Rose and Rincón, contend that most of the images of Latinos in television continue to be negative stereotypes -- and opportunities for U.S.-raised Latino actors, writers, and producers are lost.
The big success of ABC's "Ugly Betty," itself based on a Colombian telenovela, has been tempered by the cancellation of "The George Lopez Show." The Mexican-American comedian ranted in dismay about the indignity that his network yanked him in favor of "Cavemen," based on the popular Geico ads.
There are Latino characters scattered among mainstream shows like "Desperate Housewives," "CSI: Miami," "Without a Trace" and "Heroes."
But at the same time that young Latinos are speaking more English, they haven't turned away from their heritage.
"I think I lost touch a bit with my culture a while ago, but I always try to come back to it," said Guevara. "I like to switch languages up so fast I don't even realize it."
This phenomenon, called retro-acculturation, has sparked a new trend toward bilingual programming emerging in cable networks like Mun2, MTV Tr3s, and SiTV.
Shows like Mun2's "The Roof" and MTV Tr3s's "Mi TRL" feature young, bilingual hosts introducing videos and interviewing music acts that perform in genres from reggaetón and bachata to rock and hip-hop. These groundbreaking shows encourage switching back and forth between English and Spanish at will.
This week MTV Tr3s announced that according to Nielsen, the year-old network has doubled its penetration into American households; it is now available in 6.2 million Hispanic and 31.9 million total households. But for Guevara and her generation, both mainstream and Spanish-language TV have a long way to go to catch up to this emerging demographic.
"If you want American children that have been raised here to watch 'Hispanic' shows, it has to be something we can relate to," said Guevara. "Something about a kid going to school and having a hard time reading and readjusting and learning their new surroundings."
Source: The Star Ledger
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