Exposure to Food, Beverage, and Alcohol Advertising on Spanish-Language Television Among Children, Adolescents, and Adults in the US, 2022.

Latin American women, girls, and LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) individuals experience high rates of violence, making Latin America one of the world's most affected regions for gender-based violence. Television, a powerful socialization tool, shapes attitudes and influences behavior. This study analyzes 50 episodes from nine Spanish-language TV series set in Latin America, finding that 90% of episodes depict gender-based violence. However, few portray positive behavior modeling (e.g., victims seeking help) or include educational content. These findings underscore the need for research and interventions addressing how entertainment media shapes discourse around gender-based violence.

Latinx residents in New York City experience greater disparities in alcohol use behaviors, chronic liver disease mortality, and other health and legal consequences from high-risk alcohol use compared to non-Latinx White residents. As media-based advertising of alcohol can influence health behaviors, this study aimed to take an "upstream" approach by analyzing rates of alcohol advertising across primetime English- and Spanish-language television networks and radio station broadcasting in New York City during September 7-27, 2022. A systematic content analysis of a randomly drawn, two-week composite sample of primetime YouTube television networks and radio stations revealed significantly higher alcohol advertising rates per hour on Spanish- than English-language media (rate difference across television networks = 4.91, 95% CI = 3.96, 5.85, p < 0.05; rate difference across radio stations = 1.86; 95% CI = 1.17, 2.55, p < 0.05). Findings underscore disparities in alcohol advertising across diverse media types, disadvantaging consumers of Spanish-language media. Stronger regulation and enforcement of alcohol marketing laws are needed to curb Latinx health inequities.

Objective Identify how Hispanics in the US Midwest access health information to best promote and disseminate health information among Hispanics in a post-pandemic era. Background Across the nation, significant racial and ethnic disparities persist in the prevalence and mortality rates associated with COVID-19. This disparity was particularly pronounced in the Midwest region, exemplified by the summer of 2020 when Hispanics comprised 48% of the total reported COVID-19 cases in the largest county of the state. Health education information enhances health outcomes by increasing health knowledge and empowering individuals to make informed decisions and adopt healthier behaviors. However, there remains to be more data concerning how Hispanics access health information, particularly amidst public health emergencies. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study surveying Spanish-speaking Hispanics, examining how they accessed COVID-19 information during critical times of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample was drawn from Hispanic adults accessing services at the Mexican Consulate in Nebraska. Input from Hispanic community members and the local Mexican Consulate was included in developing the questions. Counts and percentages were used to summarize responses. Results A total of 307 individuals participated in our study. Over half of the participants indicated that they did not have health insurance. Our findings show that our participants rely on television and social media as their primary sources for seeking health information. Regarding social media, Facebook ranked first, followed by YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter/X. About 60% seek health information from Mexican media sources. Lack of time, cost, and language ranked the main barriers to accessing health information. Implications This study highlights the significant influence of Spanish-language television and social media in disseminating health information to Hispanics in the US, notably during public health crises. Our findings underscore the need to enhance the utilization and effectiveness of these communication channels within the healthcare sector. Ensuring adequate training for healthcare professionals to engage effectively via television and social media platforms is vital.

Communication Policy to Reduce Health Disparities: A Cross-Language Content Analysis of YouTube Television Advertising

Abstract This article focuses on the bicultural Latino identity-building discourses promoted by TV stations KMEX Channel 34 (Spanish International Network/Univision) and KVEA Channel 52 (Telemundo) through news and public affairs programming in metropolitan Los Angeles, home of the United States’s largest concentration of Latinas and Latinos. The two stations’ news and public affairs shows are historically significant for being their most extensive locally produced content and offering a valuable audio/visual representation of Latino Southern California’s cultural development from the early 1960s to late 1980s. Both stations reflected their social context, broadcasting to an overwhelmingly Mexican-heritage audience; but producers and investors at KMEX-34 and KVEA-52 also consciously sought a wider Spanish-speaking audience in Southern California by framing viewers as politically empowered bicultural U.S. Latino subjects defined by a positive affirmation of their cultural background (broadly inclusive of all of Latin America) and their integration into U.S. life through participation in electoral politics and other civic processes. Combining archival research consisting of early scripts, office memoranda, program reviews, viewer letters, oral history interviews, and analysis of extant video recordings preserved in the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s News and Public Affairs Collection, I historicize the ways locally produced programming on Spanish-language TV framed and promoted notions of an additive and empowering bicultural U.S. Latino identity.

Spanish-language media have often been portrayed as catering to a “niche” market, because of presumed ethnic specificity and issues of linguistic proficiency and preference. Constructed as such, these media are seldom considered in the mainstream as having an impact on social incorporation, and media and opinions in the larger U.S. public sphere. Based on field research conducted in Detroit and Los Angeles, this article challenges such notions, showing how Spanish-language television, when utilized as a place-making tool as well as a source of local and national information, can contribute to viewers’ resilience, sense of self, and sociopolitical expression through media enfranchisement. In contrast to other studies that emphasize textual analysis or media enterprises in the aggregate, this article takes a meso-level approach, focusing on the differences made for Latinx communities by innovation in media access, reception strategies, and outreach by media professionals, along with the qualitative improvement of audiovisual representation.

In this photo essay, we center Chicana radio and television broadcasting trailblazer Graciela Gil Olivarez who, with a microphone in hand, amplified Mexicana and Chicana voices and stories across the Southwest from 1951 to the mid-1960s and again in the 1980s. Olivarez bridged her broadcasting work with an impressive career in government organizations that made her the highest-ranking Latina during President Jimmy Carter’s term. Through a series of photographs of Olivarez’s life and career trajectory, we mark the place of the first woman disc jockey in Phoenix, Arizona, and later owner of her own Spanish-language television network, KLUZ, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as a key figure in Latina media histories. This photo essay mines the visual archive—photographs that span Olivarez’s early career in radio and television broadcasting and subsequent political work—in order to establish how Chicanas innovated media production to center their voices and narratives.

When television programs are translated for global audiences, languages are changed, but so too are constructions of diverse identities. Characters who are Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC) undergo transformations in order to be intelligible outside of their original national contexts; such transformations might reinforce these characters’ difference or eliminate it, effectively whitewashing BIPOC voices. This article unpacks this phenomenon by investigating the translation of diverse characters through the lens of the many industrial norms and constraints that shape the dubbing industry. Using the international Fox hit Glee (2009–2015) as an entry point for exploring the role of dubbing in Latin America, this study complicates conventional notions about global media’s imperialist and hybridizing implications by tracing political economy and industrial practices onto the dubbing of Black, Latinx, and Asian television characters.

Reviewed by: Univision, Telemundo and the Rise of Spanish-language Television in the United States by Craig Allen María Luisa Ruiz Allen, Craig. Univision, Telemundo and the Rise of Spanish-language Television in the United States. U of Florida P, 2020. Pp. 352. ISBN 978-1-683-40164-3. Univision, Telemundo and the Rise of Spanish-language Television in the United States is a substantial history of Univision, the oldest Spanish-language network in the United States, and its younger rival, Telemundo. The book illustrates the ways that technology, business interests, personal rivalries, politics, government regulations, and changing demographics shaped the development of the Spanish International Network (SIN), the enterprise that later became Univision, and the US media landscape. Using archival materials, interviews, trade publications and legal documents, this first comprehensive scholarly history of Spanish-language television reimagines the birth of US television as not solely English speaking, geographically centered in New York, nor dominated by the big three English-language networks. The book is organized chronologically, with each of the nine chapters focusing on the key moments and the protagonists who shaped SIN. Its first chapters detail SIN's incorporation in 1961 while the next two chapters chronicle the struggles by key players to build it into a viable network. These chapters detail how important figures secured financing, acquired television stations, and capitalized on technologies like UHF channels, dismissed by English-language media because they were low-frequency and, thus, not desirable. The following two chapters, one of which is cleverly titled "The Wages of SIN," focus on the growth of the network and the long-simmering tensions between figures like Frank Fouce, Reynold Anselmo and the Mexican media mogul Don Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, who initially fronted the capital to purchase the first television station. Indeed, it is hard to ignore the long shadow of Azcárraga Vidaurreta in terms of the development of Spanish language networks in the United States. In fact, the book begins with an extensive section on the rise of Azcárraga Vidaurreta's business and political fortunes in Mexico, and his keen interest in expanding his media empire into the United States. In order to circumvent the 1934 Federal Communications Act, which specified that only US citizens could own US radio and television stations, Azcárraga Vidaurreta fronted Anselmo's capital to purchase what would be SIN's first station. Lawsuits between the two owners uncovered SIN's foreign ownership and ultimately led to the sale of the company. The next chapters focus on the successes and innovations at the network, including pioneering satellite technologies. The following sections chart the fall of SIN and its transformation into Univision, its continued legal challenges, Federal Communications Commission interventions, as well as internal battles over finances, programming, and control over the network. These shakeups created space for the creation of Telemundo. The final part of the book describes the intense personal and business rivalries between the two networks as they competed for the ever-growing market share of Latinos via programming, like prestigious news shows and telenovelas. The final chapter provides a more nuanced overview of the networks in the development of a Latino imagined community and their future in a changing media landscape. Perhaps determined by the available archival material, certain chapters focus heavily on legal battles, business relationships, and personal animosities among key players. These chapters include an overwhelming amount of information that could be challenging to keep track of. Chapter 6 for instance, titled "Armageddon," details the complex and drawn out FCC investigation into the ownership of SIN that was precipitated by a lawsuit between two of the original founders of the network. The author does an admirable job of streamlining what was a multi-year investigation by the FCC into an intelligible narrative while still sharing how SIN marched forward. The individual timelines for both Univision and Telemundo provided as appendices assist a reader as they follow the complex histories narrated in the individual chapters. Interesting details about Spanish language programming produced in the United States and the use of technology are scattered throughout the chapters. For example, it is briefly mentioned that Guillermo González Camarena, a forerunner in television...

Significant shifts in the US demographic landscape over the last 20 years have transformed the face of marketing. Yet, for more than three decades, marketing to US Hispanics has undergone little change, with Spanish-language television continuing to represent the bulk of media spend. This paper provides a brief summary of the ‘nativitybased view’ (NBV) — a new methodology that recognises that US and foreign-born Hispanics are not homogeneous in what they watch on television; rather, nativity is a more effective variable than language in targeting and measuring the changing US Hispanic television audience — particularly Hispanic millennials.

The Latin American telenovela genre has enjoyed a long-lasting hegemonic position in prime-time television across the region, and particularly within US Spanish-language television market. However, in the last several years, Spanish-language national television networks, as well as their prime-time telenovela product, are being challenged by the new digital and mobile media landscape. Television networks have deployed a variety of strategies to better accommodate to new audiences’ consumption routines in a digital age. This article focuses on a particular moment of disruption – and continuity –, which has been a game changer for US Hispanic television and has transformed the face of fictional serial (telenovelas) in prime time. The surge in popularity of a telenovela subgenre originating in Colombia and widely adopted by US television corporations, known as narconovela, has transformed the telenovela genre/format, prompting industry professionals to initiate new institutional discourses aimed to mark these texts as super series, and in doing so labelling them as a new type of genre. Super series are an excellent case study for understanding the dialectic notion of disruption and continuity both in television studies and the television industry.

Book Review: <i>Spanish-Language Television in the United States: Fifty Years of Development</i> by Kenton T. Wilkinson

Significant shifts in the US demographic landscape combined with the rise of digital media over the last 20 years have transformed the face of marketing. Yet, for more than three decades, marketing to US Hispanics has undergone little change, with Spanish-language television continuing to represent the bulk of US Hispanic media spend. This study investigates whether there is a better way to drive television return on investment (ROI) with Hispanics at a time when television viewership is declining and digital and social media usage is almost ubiquitous among Hispanics. The paper advances the ‘Nativity-Based View’ (NBV), a new methodology which proposes that nativity is an effective variable in targeting and measuring the changing US Hispanic television audience, and applies this model across three business categories to measure its effectiveness in a real marketing context. The results of the first test show that US and foreign-born Hispanics are not homogeneous in what they watch on television, suggesting that Spanish-language television is not the ‘best way’ to target US Hispanics. The second test couples nativity with age, and finds that approximately 73–79 per cent of Spanish-language television does not reach Hispanic millennials, suggesting that the NBV is a valuable planning and investment tool in targeting key segments of the Hispanic population. The paper discusses the implications of the NBV, and encourages brands and advertising agencies to adopt a new tool to drive television ROI for US Hispanics.

Many US Spanish-language television producers, marketers and academics construct Latino/a identity in Spanish-language media narrowly, despite numerous scholarly critiques of the pan-Latino label. Examining how Latino/a immigrants in metropolitan Miami interpret representations of immigrants, immigrant communities, and urban services in Spanish-language news, I argue that diverse Latino/a audiences emerge according to how the media representations evoke participants’ subjective positioning in locally and nationally embedded social hierarchies. The study reveals how intra-Latino/a factors affect audience formation, and discusses implications for audience studies and journalism practice.

Latinos are at high risk for many health problems, yet they are often missed by traditional health communication campaigns that tend to deploy messages through general audience channels. New immigrant Latinos living in Los Angeles indicate a strong connection to Spanish-language television for health and medical information, but the quantity and quality of health information provided through such programming has not been systematically evaluated. Grounded in communication infrastructure theory, a content analysis of Spanish-language television news and talk shows was conducted to examine the nature of health coverage. As a primary health source for the Los Angeles Latino community, Spanish-language television could serve an important role in helping Latinos overcome health disparities by connecting them to a health storytelling network. However, findings show that the programs analyzed do not adequately connect viewers to other health storytellers or personalize information in such a way that may prompt interpersonal discussion and the dissemination of health information.

Hispanic Americans use prescription medications at markedly lower rates than do non-Hispanic whites. At the same time, Hispanics are the largest racial-ethnic minority in the USA. In a recent effort to reach this underdeveloped market, the pharmaceutical industry has begun to create Spanish-language direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) campaigns. The substantive content of these campaigns is being tailored to appeal to the purported cultural values, beliefs and identities of Latino consumers. We compare English-language and Spanish-language television commercials for two prescription medications. We highlight the importance of selling medicine to a medically under-served population as a key marketing element of Latino-targeted DTCA. We define selling medicine as the pharmaceutical industry's explicit promotion of medicine's cultural authority as a means of expanding its markets and profits. We reflect on the prospects of this development in terms of promoting medicalisation in a US subgroup that has heretofore eluded the pharmaceutical industry's marketing influence. Our analysis draws on Nikolas Rose's insights concerning variations in the degree to which certain groups of people are more medically made up than others, by reflecting on the racial and ethnic character of medicalisation in the USA and the role DTCA plays in shaping medicalisation trends. A video abstract of this article can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZabCle9-jHw&feature=youtu.be.

US Spanish-language television was an estimated US$6.1bn industry in 2013 and has more than tripled since 2003. Marketing has changed dramatically during this time with digital and social media revolutionising the industry with improved metrics and real-time analytics. Unfortunately, television measurement of the US Hispanic population has not changed significantly in more than two decades, has relied on ‘language’ as its sole metric during this time, and has not kept up with the full diversity of the changing Hispanic population. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there are better and more efficient ways to measure the US Hispanic television audience, which would help leading corporations optimise their media investments. By way of a quantitative primary study, this paper advances two variables — nativity and years-incountry — which we propose are more effective and efficient in targeting Hispanics than language alone. We hope this initial study will spur innovation and an open discussion on new ways to measure the US Hispanic television audience and help corporations drive media efficiency and target effectiveness. Although this study focused on US Hispanics, there is an opportunity to test and apply the findings across other multicultural groups in the USA and abroad.

Many people were stunned to learn the Spanish-language television network Univision was the highest rated in prime time among all U.S. networks in July 2013, a feat it repeated a year later. Steady growth of its demographic and advertising bases, combined with astute management, has brought success to this dynamic industry sector. However, the boom years were preceded by several decades of formidable challenges and lean periods. This article exa mines the principal technological, programming, financial and competitive obstacles network management faced from the 1970s to the 2000s, illustrating the variety of fronts on which ethnic-oriented media leaders maneuvered during a period of rapid population growth and industry transformation.

Using the US Spanish-language television broadcasts of the FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer (football) tournament, the present study offers an analysis of the crucial role that language plays in the gendering of sport. Despite the framing of the coverage as a celebration of women’s participation in sports, this was undermined by the sometimes covert, sometimes overt, objectification, trivialization and patronizing of the players and their sport during the broadcast. We examine the ground-level interactional practices through which this marginalization was achieved. First we consider references to persons, presenting overarching quantitative distributions as well as contextualized examples. We then highlight how gender is brought to the interactional surface and made relevant – to the speakers themselves and to the at-home audience – through the discursive dichotomization of women’s versus men’s soccer, with particular attention to the ways in which topicalization of gender-based differences can pave the way for the recreation of gender-based inequalities. Finally, we illustrate how gendering soccer reflects and transcends the game itself, invoking and reestablishing normative gender roles and expectations in and from society.