The State of Spanish Radio: Its Future and Relevance

Deborah, for years, it seems that people were talking about Spanish TV being dead.

And yet we see growth, it seems.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about Spanish language TV today?

Well, I believe probably the biggest misconception is that you can reach this massive audience by not using Spanish language TV.

That in today's more diluted world, and Matt, feel free to chime in on this because you know probably this part better than I do, but in today's world where there's so much bilingualism, so much culture that has mesh together and everything, that you can reach people outside of what is really very organic and very dear to them, and that is Spanish language programming, Spanish language television.

I think one thing that's brought a lot of this to the forefront has been the World Cup, where we have seen such huge audiences, both, yes, on general market stations, English language stations, But certainly who is brought to the forefront by some of the Spanish language commentators who have been so popular over the years.

So there's been, I think, a renewed interest and actually maybe not even renewed to some people, but like an awakening that, oh, it's here.

So.

Matt, would you agree? Have you seen growth? I know that what Deborah just said is very true, that you can't really reach the whole audience without also trying to communicate with the Spanish language speakers as well.

Is that what you see in your daily operations?

Yes, and I can also add to that by saying, you know, we know that the population is already there.

And just to give a little background, my first language was English.

I learned Spanish.

And the first radio station I had was Spanish, but I've added four more and all of the rest are English radio stations.

But nonetheless, as I see what's going on on the television side of the equation, I can tell you that you can almost feel it and sense it.

that a lot of what's going on in television is trying to really bring all of the spanish-speaking folks up to date so you know at one point you could see the two the bigger ones univision and telemundo they only make minimal changes every so many years not anymore they're keeping up to date sort of like the way network television does and they sort of keep up with a lot of the trends and i don't know how many spanish language televisions there are across the country but it probably has to be the second only to English, I would imagine.

Yeah, I find it fascinating that we have 68 million Hispanics in America right now.

It's one of the only groups that's still showing an increase in the birth rate.

So not only are the numbers continuing to grow, but when you talk about young listeners or young viewers, the average age in this country, I think for the younger set, is 31 with Hispanics, but 39 outside that group.

So there is the potential for growth there.

In fact, in 2034, it'll be the first year in this country that we have more people age 65 and older than we do children.

But yet you don't see that represented necessarily in advertisement sales.

So I think, is the challenge really the audience or is it convincing advertisers that the audience exists? I'm curious to know what you think.

I believe what you say is absolutely true.

There seems to be a disconnect at the agency level and at the client level that insofar as who's buying and more importantly, who's influencing a lot of those buys.