Profiler: Una Vez Mas
(from October's RBR/TVBR Solutions Magazine)
Una Vez Mas is the largest television affiliate group for Azteca America here in the states. It began with a single LPTV in Las Vegas three years ago and has grown to 15 signals in 13 key Hispanic markets. UVM expects to be in 11 additional markets over the next 12-18 months. The company is concentrated in heavily populated Southwest markets with a large Mexican base.
Azteca America parent TV Azteca launched 12 years ago in Mexico when the Mexican government opened up the airwaves to competition. Previously, Televisa had been the broadcast monopoly for 70 years there. In that 12-year period, TV Azteca has garnered a 40% share of the Mexican TV audience. Three years ago they decided to come north into the U.S. and start Azteca America, which targets the Mexican American audience. We spoke to UVM's Randy Nonberg, President/COO ("RN") and Bob Hyland, President of Television ("BH").
Tell us about the programming strength Azteca America brings to your stations.
RN: There are two networks in Mexico that TV Azteca operates. One is called Canal Siete one is Canal Trece. Essentially the best programming from those two networks is combined with original programming that they produced specifically for the US-that's what's being distributed and broadcast on Azteca America. We'd like to mention the full cooperation we receive from TV Azteca in Mexico City. Luis Echarte, President, Azteca America, Jorge Jaidar, VP/Programming and Mario San Ramon, CEO, are always asking what they can do to help grow the Azteca America audience, this is quite different from the Televisa/Univision relationship which has resulted in lawsuits being filed against each other. UVM has a very strong partnership with TV Azteca in Mexico City that will result in mutual audience and revenue success.
BH: The Mexican Soccer League is very popular obviously in Mexico as well as here in the US. We air those games on Saturday and Sunday afternoons during the soccer season. We found right away, with no promotion in our marketplaces, that those are getting lots of audience traction in Nielsen on weekend afternoons. So our first ratings success has been specifically our soccer broadcast.
RN: We actually broadcast more Division One Mexican soccer league games than our competitors combined. TV Azteca has the rights to all the home games of 8 of the 10 first division Mexican soccer league teams. They also own one-a team called Monarcas de Morelia.
BH: The other show that is critical to our success and that is a show called LaAcademia, which is basically the Mexican version of the FOX's American Idol. LaAcademia runs on Sunday nights for three and a half hours, and during the week the show runs in primetime. What you have is 14 to 20 students who are in a Big Brother-type house studying music, learning how to sing and play various musical instruments. We show what they're doing in this house during the week and then on Sunday nights we air them performing. The audience gets to vote on who they want to keep on the show every week. It gets double-digit ratings on Sunday night in our marketplaces.
We also have been able to use that time period to run Azteca America promos to drive that audience to our Monday-Friday novelas in primetime. The novelas have been probably the most difficult areas to crack when it comes to ratings because Univision has had such stronghold on that time period.
We're seeing good audience growth with the primetime numbers starting out with "Ventaneando." It's an hour-long show weeknights, much like Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood. It's anchored by a lady named Patti Chapoy who is like the number one female personality in Mexican television. That show really launches the ratings numbers into our primetime novellas, which are now getting some audience traction in primetime. We're not far away now to be a major competitor against Univision and Telemundo in this marketplace.
Additionally, we're going to be announcing a deal in place in a couple of our markets to start airing headline news beginning in the fourth quarter with a major broadcast group in one case and then another major company in another case. We think that the long term effect for us to grow our business is our programming from Azteca America-the national programming-as well as filling a commitment to the local community in airing local public affairs shows and daily local newscasts.
What is your expansion strategy?
RN: We would like to expand further in the Texas market than some of the smaller Texas markets-cities like El Paso are very important to us going forward. Azteca America does have in Los Angeles and Houston and a number of other markets full power stations. But what we've been trying to do is to follow a low power strategy and create what I would call kind of a synthetic full power station. We try to find low powers that are well located in terms of where they are transmitting from that are well-equipped technologically. Class A low powers that have signals that cover areas where the Hispanic population tends to be highly concentrated. If we can hit those particular areas we can probably reach 90-95% of the Hispanic population in a particular DMA. The reason I call it a synthetic is we go out and obtain cable carriage. The key to our strategy was to get cable carriage. The quality of the programming basically dictated, in our minds and ultimately in the minds of the MSOs as well, is that this is programming they had to have.
BH: By the way this is analog cable carriage too. We're in very strong marketplaces with very strong channel positions. For example in San Antonio we're on Time Warner channel 9; in Austin Time Warner channel 14 and on the Comcast system in Dallas channel 21. So we've really got some strong beachfront property in the channel positions.
Is the LP option the only logical way to get into more markets?
RN: In our view it's not the only way to get into markets. There are full powers available in some of the markets. We just, in terms of the economic analysis we've done, can't justify the type of financial and capital investment that's required to do that when you compare it to the investment required to get a low power with cable carriage and satellite carriage as well. You look at the two and you give up a very small percentage of the audience for very, very big dollars.
BH: Basically if you buy a full power then you have the must-carry covenant that protects you which gives you the cable carriage. From our business plan it's much more efficient to go the low power road plus cable-we don't have must-carry but we do get the cable penetration that the must-carry stations also get. There are some markets where we don't have total cable carriage yet but we're in the process of trying to fill in those blanks, but in most cases we've got very strong cable carriage in all of our markets. And of course our cable partners are Comcast, Time Warner and Cox.
How would you describe the marketplace in the US right now for Hispanic TV?
RN: Hispanics are now the largest minority in the US, representing as of very recently 41,000,000 people here. They represent 9% of the buying power in the and yet roughly 2% of advertising dollars are being spent on this group. So it is dramatically underserved in that regard. In terms of content, the reality is there are relatively few choices to Hispanics in the US. There's been Telefutura, Telemundo and Univision and there are some smaller-Lieberman and some smaller independents-but its seems a demographic of that size is easily entitled to have four choices. And we're coming in a sense as the fourth but we don't expect to remain the fourth.
There is clearly still under penetration by branded advertisers in the marketplace. The fact of the matter is only 40% of major TV advertisers budget now for Hispanic focused media and there is an educational process that's going to need to continue to take place in order to improve that number.
BH: What we think is very interesting is the Hispanics as a whole represent only about 75% of the average income of the population in general. However they basically outspend on average non-Hispanics in virtually all non-durable good categories. It's 90% more for instance on children's clothing, 88% on footwear and 49% on food.
Tell us about the letter you sent to Sen. George Allen (R-VA) objecting to government oversight being considered in Congress to regulate ratings services (S. 1372, introduced by Senator Burns).
BH: Basically that's a Rupert Murdoch situation. As you know with the local people meters coming aboard in Los Angeles and Chicago and Boston and New York and soon Washington, DC and Dallas, obviously the meters were showing that their numbers were dropping and of course some of the FOX shows have very strong minority audiences and their numbers were going down. But The Media Research Council is there to kind of monitor what Nielsen does and then to pass the accreditation on the Nielsen services. Obviously what FOX would like to have happen would be specifically give the US Government the charge of the MRC and nothing could be sold to a station group or a broadcaster unless the MRC says it was okay. Well from our point of view all that does is it really stymies the competitive process.
I'll remind you that back in 1995 when I was GM of Arbitron Television, the broadcasters basically shut down Arbitron Television because they were saying we were either going to buy Nielsen or we were either going to by Arbitron, give us your best shot. What happened? Arbitron TV bled to death because the broadcasters would not support both services.
Nielsen will come out with products, they always run these by the MRC, the MRC talks to the people at Nielsen to determine whether it is a credible service or not. I'm not here to defend Nielsen but I do think that they do take the steps to try to talk to the broadcasters to try to find out what has to be met. Obviously you've got so many different agendas here-the FOX agenda is different from the CBS agenda, from the NBC from the ABC, the UPN's to the WB's. They all have their own agenda and they're trying to keep everybody happy and give everybody a report card every morning with the overnight. Obviously it's impossible.
One of the things I noticed that came out recently flies in the face of FOX. The LPMs are now showing an increase in the 18-34 demo this summer compared to last year. That's a plus because our network really is an 18-34, 18-49 network. All of our programming is geared towards those key demos. I think we want to be on the cutting edge of programming in terms of our novelas, in terms of our sports, in terms of our entertainment shows.
Good Morning - Thanks for your loyal TVBR readership. The only trade publication you need to stay informed.
