February was a bad month for NBC. Two of NBC’s fall favorites, The Voice and Revolution were still on hiatus. Smash debuted poorly in its second season premiere alongside comedic flop 1600 Penn and dreadful dramas Do No Harm and Deception. Pile that on to a weak slate of major sporting event contracts and Ted Turner’s National Broadcasting Company was bound to take a tumble. But no one expected this. NBC fell from first in November to fifth in the February “sweeps” race, a key period for advertisers assessing the impact of their dollars and negotiating new contracts.
And while much of the blame for the fall has fairly been lodged against NBC’s dumbfounding inability to book successful comedies to replace now-finished 30 Rock and outgoing The Office, little attention has been focused on their top-four replacement: Univisión.
Though not the first time a Spanish-language broadcaster has cracked network TV’s stranglehold on monthly ratings (it bested CBS twice before in July 2010 and July 2012), Miami-based Univisión’s success means more now than perhaps ever before.
Traditionally, broadcasting for America’s estimated 37 million Spanish-speaking residents has aimed to air cheaply produced telenovelas imported from Mexico and Venezuela, in addition to some original news and talk show programming, like Univisión’s Saturday night variety show Sabado Gigante. While 37 million may be a small pool with respect to the larger U.S. market, it dwarfs many countries that churn out quality programming, like Canada.
The success of Spanish broadcasting has manifested itself outside of the solid ratings, producing verifiable stars that have crossed over into mainstream English programming. Many forget that Sofía Vergara, Emmy nominee and current star of Modern Family, got her start as a co-host of Fuera de Serie on Univisión. Others, like Dancing with the Stars season 14 third-place finalist William Levy, jumped from telenovelas into reality television and advertising.
Univisión along with its main rival Telemundo have been pumping out this formula for years, but shifting demographics have gradually led to ratings increases, putting them on par with their English-language counterparts.
Their success, however, does not come from sitting on their laurels—the industry is in constant flux. On Aug. 13, 2012 MundoFox, a joint venture between Fox International Channels and Mexican broadcaster RCN Televisión, went on the air. Alongside a slew of Mexican imports, MundoFox’s programming includes a new format for Spanish broadcasting stateside: Teleseries. Featuring action-packed storylines, higher production value, and investments in special effects, Teleseries like MundoFox’s breakout hit El Capo (think Hawaii Five-0 in el barrio) are changing perceptions of the bounds on Spanish-language programming in the U.S. Other networks will have to rise to the challenge.
Other smaller shifts have been nonetheless transformative. A year ago, Univisión began providing English subtitles during its primetime hours, joining Telemundo where programming has always catered to an increasingly bilingual demographic.
Univisión is taking the bilingualization of its programming even further, partnering with ABC to launch Fusion, an English-speaking news station aimed specifically at Latino consumers. Fusion is gearing up for a mid-2013 premier.
In general, Univisión and American Spanish broadcasters more broadly, have adapted alongside America’s Latino communities. In the 1990s, much of their audience were adults coming here to work temporarily. But after a boom in immigration in the early 2000s, much of the Latino community is comprised of young families and adolescents. The changing age dynamic has propelled these stations to develop programming that caters to teens and young adults, a crowd with which telenovelas have fallen out of favor.
This new market of second-generation Latinos also differs linguistically from their parents. Most of them speak English as their first language at school and with friends, but use Spanish at home. For this demographic, language, too, has no border; English and Spanish blur together.
Likewise, national origin is less significant today. Originally, Univisión’s primary market was the vibrant Cuban community in South Florida. Telemundo, on the other hand, primarily catered its content to Puerto Rican audiences, both in San Juan and San Antonio. Others, like Estrella TV and Azteca América, were geared toward Mexican viewers.
Today, though, those national distinctions are less important, particularly for U.S. broadcasters seeking to create programming. Today, both in politics and in civil society, increasingly see themselves as Hispanics, not as Venezuelans or Salvadoreans.
The truth is that Spanish-language broadcasters have been slowly adapting for years, growing from nation-specific localized entities to national rankings powerhouses with ever growing media empires. And unlike the Republican Party, Univisión has changed with the demographics, and reaped the ratings rewards.
RCN Television is colombian and Mundofox content is mostly colombian telenovelas.