TMCnet Feature

According to an AP report  earlier this week, Univision and Disney (News - Alert) are looking into a partnership that would create a 24-hour news channel for Latinos in English. According to two sources, the talks are in preliminary stages and they were not authorized to discuss anything more. Some skeptics have asked if there is a need or room in the crowded television news market for a new English speaking news channel directed at Latinos. According to University of Southern California, Professor of Journalism and Public Policy, Roberto Suro, there is.

 “The new channel would reflect the growing trend toward more niche audiences. The English–speaking Latino market is much more diverse than the Spanish–language market,” Suro said. Univision is the nation’s largest Spanish-language media company in the country, and its officials recently have recognized the need to maintain and expand viewershipto a new niche market of young Latinos that speak English as their first language. According to the 2010 census, U.S. born, English-speaking Latinos make up sixty percent of the growth in the nation’s Hispanic population over the last decade. A number that is sure to continue in steady growth.

As the race for presidency heats up this year, Disney and Univision are hoping to leverage a channel that could be up in time for the fall vote (November), giving millions of young Latinos the ability to watch a news network that discusses the issues that effect them most. This network could be especially effective in states like Florida, New Mexico and Colorado, where Hispanics are influential swing voters.

This purposed partnership reflects efforts of the mainstream media companies to target Latinos over the last few years. With media giants like NBC and FOX, creating Latino based broadcast and Internet coverage, and news sites like the Huffington Post (News - Alert) creating a Huffpost LatinoVoices site, it is clear that there is a market out there for Latin-based news coverage and that Univision and Disney could reach into its most untapped resource.

Jorge Plasencia, vice chair of the National Council of La Raza and CEO of the Hispanic marketing firm Republica, which includes Univision among its clients, said he believes that a news channel in English would fulfill a niche.

"There's nearly 50 million Latinos in the U.S. They do want to know what's going on in Mexico, Puerto Rico and all over Latin America. The major networks don't cover that news, it's hard for those networks to go into those issues in depth because they're trying to reach all of America," Plasencia added.

With the creation of this news channel, Disney and Univision could gain access to a partially represented niche market. With so many national news organizations broadcasting and creating content in Spanish only, they are missing out on the younger demographic that is quickly becoming the majority in Latin American society here in the U.S. And by positioning the launch for the possible news channel in November, it would give the channel plenty of time to prepare content for the 2012 election, allowing it to gain a national audience quickly by offering Hispanic based election news in English to a growing young population of Latino-Americans.