Hispanics flock to Univision's debate

HISPANICS FLOCK TO UNIVISION'S DEBATE
[SOURCE: MediaLife, AUTHOR: Toni Fitzgerald]
There have already been nine presidential candidate debates this year on cable news and broadcast, each one of them featuring the same candidates saying the same things. That sense of repetition has led to only middling viewership, with the presidential election still more than a year away. But Sunday night on Univision, there was finally a candidate forum that did offer something new and different, a first-of-its-kind meeting of all the Democratic presidential hopefuls to address the issues of interest to Hispanic voters, and in Spanish, no less, with translations from English crawling across the bottom of the screen. With their one great chance to hear what the presidential candidates had to say on these issues, and in their language, loads of Hispanics tuned in. Univision’s 90-minute “Destino 2008: Foro Presidencial” presidential forum Sunday at 7 p.m. drew 2.2 million total viewers, or more than either of the MSNBC and CNN debates thus far this year. It was only 80,000 behind the average for one Republican debate last month on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopolous." Among adults 18-49, the forum averaged 1.27 million viewers, almost double the average for the previous debates on the cable networks and ABC.
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman2/publish/Television_44/Hispanics...