Changing U.S. Audience Poses Test for a Giant of Spanish TV

[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Mireya Navarro]
Catering to the country's growing Latino population — 40 million and counting — Univision now challenges ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, especially in big coastal cities like New York, Los Angeles and Miami, occasionally beating them in the ratings with its sexy, soapy prime-time shows. But as would-be buyers prepare bids for Univision Communications, a consortium including Grupo Televisa of Mexico, which supplies many of the network's shows, emerged Thursday as a potential bidder. Any new owner would have to wrestle with the shifting dynamics of the company's audience. More Latinos are American-born and English-speaking, and their tastes in television are changing more quickly than Univision's shows. That poses challenges not only for Univision but for other Spanish- and English-language networks. For the first time, networks on each side of the language divide could significantly expand their audiences by pursuing the same demographic group: second- and third-generation Latinos who are bilingual or speak mostly English and are as likely to watch "Fear Factor" on NBC as "El Gordo y la Flaca" ("The Scoop and the Skinny") on Univision, and who are largely underserved in either language. "This audience wants to be validated," said Jeff Valdez, founder of SiTV, a two-year-old English-language cable network that caters to young Latinos and multicultural urban youth. "They want to see themselves on screen. They want to hear their stories." The guidebook on how to appeal to this acculturated yet ethnically proud audience is still a work in progress.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/10/business/media/10visi.html?hp&ex=11420...
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