Why television in Spanish will continue to exist for a long time

When Susana Rivera-Mills phoned her relatives in El Salvador from California, one of the frequent topics of conversation that spanned the bicultural divide was the telenovela that was airing on television in both places. “It was a way to connect, to bridge that distance,” says Rivera-Mills, a professor of Spanish linguistics at Oregon State University. “It’s one of those traditions that gets passed down.”

Spanish-language television has flourished well beyond its beginnings half a century ago as an ethnic niche medium to become one of the largest media markets in the United States, fueled by the growing Latino population and its content.

Univision, which launched in 1962 as the Spanish International Network, now ranks as the fifth largest broadcast network in the US, and its primetime ratings typically exceed those of the four largest major networks. A host of smaller players provide local and national broadcast programming, plus pay TV channels offering sports, news and movies, all in Spanish 24/7. Most have been released since 2000.

Behind that enormous growth, without a doubt, lies the sheer weight of the US Hispanic population: about 54 million or about 17 percent of the US population, fueled by four decades of waves of immigration from Latin America, mainly from Mexico.

The fact that Spanish is spoken throughout a region contributes to the influence of Hispanic television compared to other ethnic media, which tend to remain small, niche outlets that cater to immigrants from one country, says Mark Hugo López, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center. The growth of Asian immigration has dwarfed that of Latin Americans since 2010, but it is unlikely that Asian media will ever have the presence of Hispanic media, as each Asian country has its own language, creating a media market fragmented.

But a deeper part of the history of Hispanic television relates to the roles that the Spanish language and television play in Latino homes.

Unlike other immigrant groups, Latin American immigrants tend to retain their native language across generations, which drives the use of Spanish-language media.

Research by the Pew Hispanic Trends Project shows that from 1980 to 2010, the percentage of Spanish-speaking Hispanic households remained constant at around 75 percent, while the number of Italian, German, and Polish speakers dropped by 55 percent, 33 percent and 26 percent. respectively, during the same period, although the number of people claiming that ancestry increased.

“We’re still at the beginning of this wave of Hispanic immigration, which really started in the ’70s and ’80s, so we don’t know what it’s going to be like 100 years from now, like with the Italians and the Germans, but there’s a real emphasis on keeping the Spanish and connect with their country of origin,” says López.

Younger Latinos may be fluent in English, but because of the Hispanic culture’s tradition of close family ties, they often grow up surrounded by relatives who tune in to shows like “Sábado Gigante” and soap operas. Hispanic television becomes part of the comfort of “home” for the younger generations, as well as reinforcing their learning of Spanish.

“They see their mothers crying with soap operas. There is an emotional attachment,” says Felipe Korzenny, founder and director of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University.

Content is a key element of support for Hispanic television. Spanish-language television offers current events from across Latin America and the US on topics of interest to Hispanics, such as immigration reform, as well as popular sports among Latinos, such as soccer and boxing. Entertainment programs feature Hispanic celebrities and artists. “They offer a lot of programming that you can’t get anywhere else,” says Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University.

Hispanic television also has a large amount of programming available to take advantage of. Mexico, with a long history of film production, is a major source of movies and television shows. Programs from Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil and other countries are also imported. This programming offers “cultural compatibility” for US Latinos, particularly those born abroad, Korzenny says.

That compatibility isn’t always offered on mainstream television, even when Hispanics appear. ABC’s mega-hit “Modern Family,” starring Colombian Sofía Vergara as a fiery, sexy bombshell with an accent, is the highest-rated English-language show among Hispanics, but its Hispanic ratings pale in comparison to Univision’s telenovelas: 1.1 million Latinos watch “Modern Family,” 3.6 million watch the telenovela, according to Advertising Age’s 11th annual Hispanic data pack released in 2014.

“Sofía Vergara is funny to non-Hispanics because she’s a stereotype,” says Linda González, president of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies. “She’s not that funny to Hispanics.”

Latin American programming, with its plots of melodramatic rags-to-riches soap operas, is also not always relevant to the lives of Hispanics in the United States. The No. 2 Spanish-language broadcaster owned by NBCUniversal, Telemundo produces soap operas and other programming that incorporate issues important to US Latinos, including college education, diabetes prevention, and census participation. That has created an additional avenue of Hispanic-specific programming not available on mainstream television.

“We see time and time again that abandoning Spanish-language television and moving to English-language television for good is not some kind of stage in life,” said Mike Rosen, executive vice president of advertising sales for news and news at NBCUniversal. Hispanic groups, in a statement. “It is quite the opposite, a choice that is made every time the viewer takes the remote control, looking for the best, most relevant and attractive narrative programming, events or sports, without language as a limitation. And we also see one and again that when you put great content on the screen, Hispanics of all languages ​​and generations will tune in, from Spanish only to bilingual.The key is to program and produce content that is relevant to today’s US Hispanics, and they will come.”

Part of that includes adapting mainstream television shows popular among Hispanics into the Spanish language, such as NBC’s “The Voice” with Telemundo’s “La Voz Kids,” and creating telenovelas and shows that continue for multiple seasons, he notes. Rosen. .

Although several outlets have been launched in recent years that focus on offering Hispanic-themed television in English, Spanish-language television shows no signs of slowing down. In 2009, Liberman Broadcasting launched Estrella TV, a national network. In 2012, Fox stepped up Noticias Mundo Fox, a news channel.

“The Spanish-speaking population is expected to continue to grow at least until 2020, probably until 2030 and maybe longer,” says López. “Spanish-language media will continue on a growth trajectory for the foreseeable future.”