Hispanic Nets Test Social-Media Waters

TV Players Get Active on Such Sites as Facebook, Twitter

by Laura Martinez -- Multichannel News, 3/17/2010 12:13:09 PM

On the night of Feb. 28, one day after a powerful earthquake hit Chile, Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos was sitting on a plane in Miami about to embark on an eight-hour flight to the South American country.

Finding a flight had not been easy -- the airport in Santiago had been shut down and most communications were cut off. Ramos and his crew first landed in the northern city of Antofagasta, where they had to clear customs, and then continued to the capital, where they finally arrived in the early hours of March 1.


A relative newcomer to the social-media community [he joined Feb. 5], Ramos is only the latest in a string of Hispanic media personalities, journalists -- and even TV characters -- signing up on Twitter, now considered one of the top five social-media sites among U.S. Hispanics, with 1.9 million users in January, per Comscore Media Metrix. The No. 1 social media site is Facebook, which has surpassed MySpace and now counts with 10.5 million U.S. Hispanics, also per Comscore.

Reporters and news anchors at Univision, Telemundo, Azteca America, Mega TV and even smaller outlets like Time Warner Cable's NY1 Noticias in New York are actively pursuing a social-media strategy, although nobody in the space seems certain of the impact -- if any -- social media will have on their profession as they know it. For some, setting up a Twitter or Facebook account seems like a natural way to promote themselves and their network, but they are wary.

"I think we are all there because we don't want to be left behind [...] The truth is we don't really know how all of this is going to end up," said NY1 Noticias anchor Juan Manuel Benitez, who has set up accounts on both Twitter and Facebook to promote his show (Pura Política) and, hopefully, raise awareness for a cable channel with limited distribution. But he warns of a catch. "In their quest to become the first ones to break a piece of news, some of the well-established news agencies are skipping the basic filters and rigors of journalistic work and producing a hodgepodge of useless news and information," he said.

News coverage aside, Hispanic TV networks are using the popularity of social media as a way to promote themselves and ultimately bring more eyeballs to their TV shows and online properties. Their strategies have evolved rapidly, from setting up a simple corporate fan page on Facebook or Twitter to more-elaborate schemes, making social media an intrinsic part of their marketing and sales pitch.

Ahead of the curve is Telemundo, which counts more than 180,000 followers across different platforms and 17 different accounts.

"We want to be at the digital water cooler," said Telemundo executive vice president of digital media and emerging businesses Peter Blacker. The broadcaster first dipped its toes in Twitter in early 2009 to promote the Latin Billboard Awards and now has set up one fan page for each of its television shows and series.

Ultimately, said Blacker, the goal is to keep audiences engaged on the sites where they want to be (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) rather than asking them to go where they don't want to go.

Telemundo's social-media strategy is part of a five-year digital plan that kicked off in 2005, the year Blacker joined the company and when Twitter and Facebook were virtually non-existent.

Starting this year, social-media platforms are expected to be at the heart of the company's digital strategy and are already a critical part of this year's client development meetings, which substituted the traditional upfront presentations and kicked off March 15.

As for Univision, this week set up a Facebook fan page called Amamos español inviting fans to share their experiences, videos, poems and even songs about how they interact with the Spanish language. The information page promptly warns fans that: "By participating [...] you hereby grant to Univision a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, copy, reproduce, display, exhibit, perform, adapt, modify, distribute and promote any material submitted by you [...]"