Hispanic Media Holds Its Ground Against The Mainstream

WASHINGTON - A Pew Research Center’s study released today reveals Spanish-language media remains important to the nation’s growing and changing Hispanic population.

The report, Project for Excellence in Journalism, shows in the last year, this media sector tended to fare better overall than the mainstream English-language media

Hispanic newspapers overall lost circulation in 2010, but not nearly to the extent of the English-language press. (English-language dailies saw a 5% decline for the six-month period from March – September 2010.) And daily Hispanic papers actually grew circulation by 1.9%. The financial picture seems to have improved as well in the last year.

Spanish-language television had an even more positive year. Univision’s audience continued to grow and now competes with—and in some timeslots outpaces—audiences for ABC, CBS and NBC.

Indeed, between Univision and Telemundo (and all of their stations), the 2010-2011 season is projected to bring in $1.5 billion in ad revenue.

Hispanic radio and magazines also showed growth. The number of Spanish-language radio stations grew 8% for the most recent year we have data (from 1,224 in 2008 to 1,323 2009), and magazine ad spending increased in 2010. There are several ways to measure ad spending and revenue, and looking across all of these calculations, PEJ puts Spanish-language magazine ad revenue growth at about 5% in 2010.

On the digital front, while Hispanic Americans do not access the internet at the same rates as other Americans, there is growth, and bilingual Latinos are already heavily online.

This study is the latest edition to the Ethnic chapter of the State of the Media 2011annual report. The State of the Media 2011 is the eighth edition of PEJ’s annual report on the health and status of American journalism.

Among the findings the total number of Hispanic newspapers remained stable in 2010 (832 versus 835 in 2009), according to the Latino Print Network. And the largest cohort ---weekly publications—grew by 18% to 117 papers.

While daily audited newspapers grew circulation in 2010, weeklies saw a 2.5% decline to 11.08 million. This was still better performance than seen in English-language newspapers. Less-than-weeklies dropped slightly, 0.6%, to 4.92 million.

Univision has plans to launch a 24-hour news network, Univision 24/7. The channel is expected to debut sometime in 2012. While details on the channel have yet to be released, it will be distinct from Univision’s existing cable channel Galavisión and will draw heavily on the strength of Univision’s current news division.

Bilingualism seems to have led to less Spanish-language television watching, though viewing there is still strong. Almost a quarter of Hispanics who speak mostly English at home, 24%, watch one to three hours of Spanish-language TV a day, according to data from Nielsen Media Research. Still, among those who mostly speak Spanish at home, 40% watch one to three hours of Spanish-language TV a day and another 26% watch more than three.

Univision radio took steps in 2010 to solidify its place in the radio market. In April 2010, Univision Radio began to format more of its radio broadcasts so that Arbitron could collect audience ratings—a key metric used by advertising agencies and major advertisers.

Bilingual and English-dominant Latinos are far ahead of Spanish-dominant Latinos in many measures of digital usage . Spanish-language Latinos are significantly less likely to use the internet, have a home internet connection, have home broadband access, or have a cell phone than English-dominant and bilingual Latinos, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. But internet usage among Spanish-dominant internet usage has increased from 36% in 2009 to 47% in 2010.

The digital divide between Latinos and whites remained in 2010. About two-thirds of Latino (65%) and African American (66%) adults went online in 2010, compared with 77% of white adults. And only 45% of Latinos have broadband access at home, compared with 52% of blacks and 65% of whites.

This study was designed and produced by the Pew Research Center ’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The Pew Research Centeris a nonpartisan, nonprofit fact tank that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It does not take positions on policy issues. PEJ is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.