Interep has opened a new rep firm for independent Hispanic television stations: Hispanic Independent Television Sales (HITS), will help independent Hispanic stations capitalize on advertisers’ growing interest in reaching that burgeoning ethnic marketplace. HITS becomes the country’s first and only independently O&O Hispanic television sales rep firm.
Tom Marsillo has been named President of HITS, reporting to David Kennedy, CEO/Vice Chairman. In addition to his new role, Marsillo will continue to oversee Interep’s Azteca America Spot TV Sales as its president, a position he has held for two years (note that Interep’s Azteca America Spot Television Sales had previously repped five Pappas stations when they were Azteca America affiliates).
Marsillo tells TVBR so far they have officially signed TuVision, the Pappas Telecasting Stations. There are six to seven other groups pending with ongoing negotiations. There are a bunch of emerging platforms-some of them networks, some of them wanna-be networks; some of them are cable and satellite companies. HITS wants to bundle them all to provide the agencies with critical mass and viable options to the big, established choices like Univision and Telemundo.
Those groups could include Liberman; KY; WJAN-TV 41 Miami; The SBS Mega station in Miami; Ch. 8 in Miami; LATTV Houston; Caribevision in NYC, Miami Puerto Rico; MTV Tres has a number of affiliates; LK Media Group run by Barbara Lawrence, who is buying stations that will be launching Spanish in January-likely called "SuTeve"; and The Televisa and Azteca stations from Mexico along the border. In 2007, ad spending in Hispanic media is expected to increase by 5.4% over 2006, and by 2010 is expected to reach 5.5 billion.
