By DAVID BAUDER
AP Television Writer
TEANECK, N.J. — On an evening its rivals were preoccupied with Christie Brinkley’s divorce and the capture of a Brooklyn murder suspect, New York’s WXTV led its local news with a story about graffiti saying “Get out of the USA” painted near a Peruvian restaurant on Long Island.
The Spanish-speaking Univision affiliate figured it was a more meaningful story for its audience, and those kind of choices are paying off.
Within the past few months, WXTV’s 6 p.m. newscast has eclipsed its English-speaking competitors on ABC, CBS and NBC stations in popularity among viewers younger than 49. Sister station KMEX in Los Angeles had more viewers in June for its newscast than any of its English competitors, regardless of age, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Spanish-speaking news outlets all across the country have grown to become major players in their markets and all trends indicate that growth is only going to continue.
“It talks about how the United States is changing,” said Ray Rodriguez, president and chief operating officer of Univision Communications Inc., the stations’ parent company. “It’s a bigger story than just television.”
In the New York market, for example, there were 2.7 million Hispanics in 1990 and 4.3 million this year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Ramon Pineda, general manager of WXTV, stands in front of an enlarged map of that market that hangs on his office wall, pointing to different neighborhoods and how they are changing. Spanish Harlem used to be largely Puerto Rican and now is dominated by Mexican immigrants. The Bronx has mostly Puerto Ricans, Colombians have settled in Queens and Brooklyn has Mexicans. The old Cuban neighborhoods of Union City, N.J., now have Mexicans and other Central Americans. Most of the population growth has come in suburbs like Westchester County and Long Island.
It’s his business to know these details, both for the news his station covers and to show advertisers that there’s more of a market there than they might think.
In Los Angeles, the KMEX call letters are a hint that the audience composition is simpler. Their viewers are about 85 percent Mexican, said Maelia Macin, the station’s general manager.
One startling change has been the TV-watching habits of Hispanic viewers. In 1995, most Hispanic viewers in New York primarily watched English-language television (62 percent) over Spanish-language stations (38 percent), according to Nielsen Media Research. Last year, viewers favored the Spanish stations 71 to 29 percent. Similar trends are happening elsewhere.
That might be alarming to people who believe these new citizens aren’t assimilating into their new country, but Univision executives say the majority of their viewers’ homes are bilingual.
“More and more bilingual Hispanics are tuning to us,” Rodriguez said. “I think we’re hitting the nerve. They can relate better. As our product has improved over time and more and more people are coming in, people tune in and say, `That feels more like me.’”
The choice is made more for content than language, Macin said.
The Long Island graffiti is one example of a story unlikely to make English-language stations. The Spanish-language stations pay close attention to immigration issues, and are often tipped by viewers reporting raids targeting illegal immigrants. Lou Dobbs, CNN’s crusader against illegal immigration, went on WXTV for an interview.
The station has stringers in Mexico, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, and sent its own staffer to cover the Dominican election, Pineda said. Sports will talk about the Mets and Yankees, but also about a big soccer game in Mexico.
With a very heavy concentration of Roman Catholics in the audience, WXTV gave extensive coverage to Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the New York area, with a Spanish-speaking priest in the studio to explain the pope’s activities.
General news isn’t excluded; it’s just that the mix is different. English-language stations covered it heavily when the aircraft carrier Intrepid got stuck in the mud, while WXTV mentioned it briefly in the program’s third segment.
About 100 story tips a day come into her newsroom, said Norma Morato, WXTV’s news director.
Morato, who worked for CBS’ local news before joining WXTV, noticed that many public officials have added Spanish speakers in their press offices.
“They’ll see us coming in and have a press conference in English, then say, `We’ll take care of you when we’re done,’” she said.
Most news stations try to create a sense of family among their viewers, but the Spanish-speaking stations are more aggressive in cultivating the relationship. They try to be a resource for viewers who have difficulty navigating a culture new to them. WXTV has run phone banks to help register voters, sponsored free breast cancer screenings, encouraged organ donations and helped explain how to call the Better Business Bureau.
KMEX calls its effort “a su lado” — by your side — and once aired a program to tell viewers facing home foreclosure what they could do.
“We do things outside the realm of news, but it gives an image to the viewers that we care,” Pineda said.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Kathy Lyon // Aug 21, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Hello My Fellow Americans, I am pleading with you to open your eyes to the threat that illegal immigration poses to the black population of this nation-to all Americans actually. Racist illegal alien gangs are ethnically cleansing our black brothers & sisters in LA. You don’t have to be a “blood” or the other gang to be murdered. These people HATE blacks and Sharpeton & Jackson will NOT even discuss these lynchings of our people. Instead, they keep blacks focused on perceived white on black racism.i.e. Don Imus or Michael Richards. Yet those folks only uttered stupid racially insensitive comments. They didn’t kill anyone. Anytime gang bangers kill a promising black HS football player cause he’s black, it is past time for blacks to wake up. Since the 2 race hustlers have sold us out to LaRaza (the “Race” a racist Mexican illegal alien advocacy group), they are silent about these racial killings in LA. Now here in the DC area ( I live in PG County, MD), illegals are flooding us since the folks in Prince William Co.,VA came to their senses and demanded that elected officials actually do their jobs & enforce the law, they are coming here to my County. Obama talks about “racial” problems this nation still has, yet he brushed aside questions regarding the negative impact of those very illegals WHO HATE BLACK PEOPLE. This is the new Klan. I call them the “Tan Klan”. Since there are closer to 40M of these illegal alien black hating bigoted hispanics in OUR COUNTRY, if only 10% hate us, that’s still 4Million of them. 1 foreigner coming to OUR COUNTRY and hating us on sight is 1 too many. Wake up my brothers & sisters before it’s too late. Blacks in LA already can’t find jobs even if they speak Spanish, because these Mexican bastards see color 1st. After all the progress our country has made in race relations, do we really want to make 40M potentially racist Mexicans citizens? Call your Rep. & local politicians & tell them U want the laws enforced, and to put you first ahead of folks who hate us. Otherwise, your children’s future is going to be even worse than it might otherwise be. Contact me at KathyLyon2006@Comcast.Net. Although they outnumber us (through mainly illegal behavior), we black people still have more power over these corrupt politicians than they do. We need to use that power! Stop letting commie Democrats take your vote for granted. Make them earn it!
2 Kathy Lyon // Aug 21, 2008 at 10:43 pm
The Gov. of California, Arnold S. recently declared that he was going to reduce state workers salaries to minimum wage to cover CA’s huge budget deficit ($15B) almost all of which is due to the illegal alien invasion. Mexifornia spends billions on illegals, from free healthcare, schools for their fake citizen anchor babies, food stamps, housing vouchers, free this, free that-only it is the American taxpayer who picks up the tab, while American families go bankrupt with huge medical bills. Billions spent to lock up their illegal alien criminals, gangbangers working for the Mexican Mafia get help from LA’s hispanic Mayor-while these folks kill, rape and now kidnap American citizens & take them to Mexico to hold for hostage! Black people, wake up-your kid’s futures are at stake, actually, every American kid regardless of color! Since we have no true leaders-all the black Democrats in Congress support Amnesty for these black hating Latinos, the majority of blacks are obvilious to this threat, the biggest threat we have faced since we defeated the KKK. This is the new KKK, and we need to awaken in order to defeat them. They boldly tell blacks & whites in CA to keep affirmative action, cause we (B&W) will need it when they outnumber us. Go to NumbersUSA.org, to become a member (it’s free) and find out how U can make these treasonous politicians actually do their jobs. They work for us-not the Mexican Govt. or La Raza, or Casa de Maryland. Otherwise, they’re going to tax the hell out of all of us to pay for this illegal alien invasion. If not, all our men are going to be in jail, while these Fidel/Che G (commie Cubans) admirers take our jobs and enjoy the blood sweat & tears that Dr. King, Mrs. Parks, John Lewis, Fannie Lou Hamer and countless others sacrificed so that we blacks could have a shot at the American Dream. Dr. King would not be for this-he’d be out there telling the people about this huge threat we face, and one that most of us don’t see. Wake up Black America, all the progress we’ve made is at stake. All that, by people who don’t have the guts to stand up to their own govt. but want to come here to OUR COUNTRY and make fake demands for something they’re not entitled to. Last year, at an anti amnesty rally in DC-illegals actually got in my face & told me to go back to Africa! Can U imagine that? Called me a nigger too! After I informed them that I’m a black Cherokee they left me alone, but that is how the majority of them feel. They tell LA blacks that this nation actually belongs to them-although there were no Mayan or Aztecs here. No matter to them-they tell LA citizens to their faces they are the illegal ones. It’s time to make these dirty policiticans put US first-over non citizens-otherwise we’re all going to go broke and our country will truly be lost to us forever!
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