Nielsen ends separate Spanish ratings

The major Spanish TV networks transitioned to using the same National People Meter (NPM) panel as their English brethren as much as two years ago - and some, we might add, have been posting strong ratings - so the shutdown of the National Hispanic People Meter (NHPM), effective yesterday, is pretty much a non-event. With US Hispanics now 14% of the entire population, some 38.9 million people, Nielsen says the sub-sample of Hispanics within its NPM panel is more representative than the separate Hispanic panel of only 1,000 households nationwide. It also notes that ad spending on Spanish-language TV and cable networks has grown from an estimated 1.8 billion in 2001 to more than 3.05 billion last year.

TVBR observation: If you follow the weekly Nielsen ratings in TVBR, you know that Univision-TeleFutura, Telemundo and Azteca America have all made the transition to the NPM panel alongside ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW, Ion and MyNetworkTV. In fact, the biggest of the Spanish nets, Univision, sometimes tops one or more of the Big 4 in some of the key demos.