Spanish-language marketer comments on CC Radio's latest move
We asked David Perez, CEO, Latin Force (formerly Lumina Americas), to comment on Clear Channel Radio's move to bulk up on Spanish language formats and programming (9/16 RBR Daily Epaper #181). CC Radio CEO John Hogan tells RBR: "It's a tremendous area of growth and opportunity for CC Radio and we have wanted to participate for some time...we now have the experience and expertise to allow us to do so in a high quality, comprehensive way. We plan an intelligently aggressive schedule of Hispanic conversions in all market sizes and are thrilled to be providing additional choices for listeners."
It couldn't make Perez happier: "This is probably the fastest-growing radio segment in the marketplace, just like wit any media property-Hispanic is the fastest growing. What this announcement means from Clear Channel is there will be more choices for agencies and marketing targeting the Hispanic consumer, because it's not just locked up primarily with Univision Radio now or SBS or Entravision. We've got other choices coming. So that's a good thing. I don't know what their aim is in terms of a programming perspective, but one of the challenges right now is that Hispanic radio is not very diverse. Meaning that the formats are very, very similar-they're all targeting sort of the same person-Spanish dominant, kind of older listener. And there are very few choices to target younger, what we call 'New Generation Latinos.' US-born, bilingual, bicultural Latinos have different music choices and musical interests-just from a music programming side.
So my hope is that Clear Channel understands some of that and provides programming that appeals to a younger Latino demographic. 'Rock en Espanol'-you can't even hear it in New York. You hear it a little bit in LA and Miami and Texas, but you don't hear t anywhere else. So that's a big opportunity.
When this all gets put into place over the next year or so with more and more stations and formats, could it bring a significant influx of ad dollars into radio?
Says Perez: "Yes, I think it's going to help. Because think about the nature of the Hispanic media market. From television, there's two players. Univision, which is the 800-lb. Gorilla and you've got Telemundo. And then Telefutura is really part of Univision. And from there you've got these smaller, burgeoning networks like CTV, which I love. But you just don't have the amount of variety that you have in English-language television, so advertisers turn to radio out of default. And I think this is great news and it will provide us more choices that won't all be from one company. It will give advertisers more outlets to spend their increasing dollars.
But that's a challenge...advertisers' budgets are increasing dramatically and there are new advertisers coming into the marketplace. They all can't buy Univision. And for those buyers buying Univision, it's a very effective medium, it's just over-saturation. You need to broaden reach and this move by Clear Channel will help do that. We need more reach in the marketplace-that's the challenge.
Are you reading this from a forwarded email?
