Take CNN's latest attempt at a Spanish-language broadcast targeting U.S Latinos. The broadcaster is no newcomer to the Spanish-speaking world, for decades reaching Latin America with CNN en Espanol. But the company said it axed its CNN Latino domestic Spanish-language service after one year because it failed "to fulfill our business expectations."
NBC's attempt at a website called NBC Latino folded in January after 16 months, despite producing thousands of original stories. Even the much-heralded Fusion — a joint venture of Univision and ABC — is still experiencing growing pains, shedding several programs in its first year and restructuring its nightly news show from five days a week to one.
One challenge: Many in the audience today are second- and third-generation Latinos, and often they eschew a Latino-only box, even as they crave more stories that include them.
MSNBC Executive Producer Chris Pena saw the challenges firsthand in guiding NBC Latino. From the start, he said, there was debate whether to create a stand-alone site for English-speaking Latinos. NBC has since rolled its Latino content into a page within its broader revamped news site, albeit with fewer reporters but wider distribution.
Survivors have emerged and show staying power, Fusion among them. Among Latino-focused websites and TV networks born in recent years, several are still standing: HuffPost Latino Voices; VOXXI's independent news site for Latinos, Fox News Latino, focusing on the domestic English-speaking Latino market; and Mundo Fox with world news in Spanish.
Then there's the long-running NPR program Latino USA, in its 20th year. It expanded to an hour-long magazine last year after host Maria Hinojosa decided to produce the show independently.
Hinojosa says reaching Latinos is just about reaching people.
"We don't sit here and intentionally say, 'Well, we have a Mexican piece, a Dominican piece.' But we are spanning the conversation for people my age, and people who are younger," she said. "We're not only doing journalism, we're also doing storytelling."
In recent months, the popular website Buzzfeed also has noticeably upped the caliber and number of its Hispanic-related stories.
But American audiences are more fragmented than ever, meaning when it comes to Latinos, media companies and their advertisers are often pursuing a slice of a market slice.
Millennials — adults in their mid-30s and younger — and even Gen Xers — those between about 35 and 50 — are finding content differently, favoring mobile devices over TVs or desktop computers. That's especially true in the Latino market where the average age is 27, compared to 42 for non-Latino white Americans.
Source: Published originally on The Miami Herald as Reaching Latinos: Media vies for a winning formula by Laura Wides-Munoz, AP Hispanic Affairs Writer, April 3, 2014.