|
 |
APRIL 4, 2007
Pappas, Azteca America Play Hard Ball
Reading the dueling press releases from Pappas Telecasting and Azteca America calls to mind Bugs Bunny’s declaration, "You realize, of course, this means war."
If carried out, Pappas's decision to "terminate" its Azteca America affiliation agreements on June 30 for stations in the Houston; Sacramento, Calif.; and San Francisco DMAs would be a significant blow to the smallest of the Spanish-language broadcast networks.
Together, the fourth, 11th and eighth largest Hispanic markets represent a little more than 9% of Hispanic television households, according to Nielsen Media Research. Pappas also stated its intention to end affiliation agreements for its stations in Omaha, Neb.; Reno, Nev.; and Sioux City, Iowa. The largest of those markets is Reno, which is the No. 54 Hispanic market.
Azteca America’s local marketing agreement for KAZA in Los Angeles remains in place until June 2008. That same month the $132 million interest bearing note that Pappas owes TV Azteca comes due.
"Our company has affiliated various stations with the Azteca America Network during the course of the last six years. During that period, the Azteca America Network's programming has not developed and ratings have not grown as we had expected," Pappas Telecasting CEO and chairman Harry Pappas said in statement.
The announcement comes ahead of the May upfront and after a Pappas announcement that its stations in Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco were on the market. Los Angeles broker Media Venture Partners is handling the sale.
Yesterday evening, Azteca America put out a press release explaining the short-term affiliation agreements with Pappas were the "result of a negotiated settlement" and asserting "because of the nature of this agreement, Azteca America has always been ready with alternative coverage solutions." No doubt the troubled relationship with Pappas has been the focus of intense efforts by network executives but securing a full-power affiliation agreement in the aforementioned major Hispanic markets is not easily done.
Azteca America president and CEO Adrian Steckel said in the statement, "These short-term issues will be resolved and we will maintain our coverage and standing as a network. We look forward to our next press release when we can announce the beginning of those long-term affiliations for July 1."
TV Azteca is limited by U.S. law to owning no more than 25% of a broadcast station but may pursue a minority stake in combination with a private equity group. Aside from Azteca itself there are at least two other potential strategic investors for at least one of the stations. Such a purchase would represent a very large step for the Una Vez Más station group, which already owns or operates a number of Azteca America affiliates primarily in the Southwest.
It would also be a major venture for McGraw Hill, which has established a number of duopolies by adding low-power Azteca America affiliates in markets where it already owns existing full-power ABC stations. The purchase of the low-power stations have been low-cost affairs compared to the capital investment required to purchase one of the full-power Pappas stations.
Late last year Pappas Telecasting engaged in high-stakes brinksmanship during a retransmission-consent negotiation with EchoStar’s Dish Network. The company went so far as to advise Dish subscribers to turn to DirecTV, cable or telco services. At the time, Pappas said, “Our stations’ ratings demonstrate that our programming is of high value to our loyal viewers.”
[back to top]
Univision Sets 'Compliance Plan' for Children's Fare
Univision's $24 million payment to the U.S. Treasury as part of the Federal Communications Commission's consent decree grabbed headlines. Less noted was the 10 point "compliance plan" the network designed to avoid future violations of the Children's Television Act.
Key provisions include the naming of a "children's television compliance officer" and the creation of a "Educational/Informational Television Programming Advisory Committee.” That committee is supposed to be in place by the end of May and will have to send a report to the FCC about Univision's efforts to provide the minimum requirement of three hours a week of educational and informative television programming. Univision will name all the members of the committee.
From the "compliance plan", it appears Univision has little intention of producing its own children's programming. Univision did not answer questions from Hispanic Television Update about the compliance officer or advisory committee (see below).
[back to top]
Mum’s the Word at Univision
Univision's reluctance to speak with the press appears to be intact following the transition from the notoriously tight-lipped former controlling shareholder, CEO and board chairman A. Jerrold Perenchio to the new ownership group of Broadcasting Media Partners.
Questions to Rosemary Mercedes of Univision's public relations department asking if the children's television compliance officer and members of the Educational/Informational Television Programming Advisory Committee (EITPAC) had been named were referred to the public relations firm Sard Verbinnen & Co. Repeated inquiries to Brooke Morganstein of Sard Verbinnen elicited an e-mail reply stating she was "working" on getting a response. The first email was sent March 28.
The network's secrecy extends to even mundane questions such as the identity of the new chairman of the newly private company's board of directors. Morganstein had no comment on that issue. She did confirm that chief operating officer Ray Rodriguez and chief financial officer Andrew Hobson will remain in their current posts.
[back to top]
Yahoo! Telemundo Conducts Online Hispanic Study
"Hispanics have a unique relationship with media," according to "Conexión Cultural," a white paper based on research commissioned by Yahoo! Telemundo.
"They just overindex when compared to the general market. They squeeze 51 hours into a 24-hour day by multitasking," said Yahoo! Telemundo U.S. sales director Adam Chandler.
The findings released last week state that Hispanics who are currently online (a total of 16.5 million Latinos) consume more media and more of certain kinds of technology than other groups. Cell phone usage is particularly heavy among Latinos who are already online according to the report. Usage of cell phone features, such as sending e-mail, taking photos and text-messaging, are all said to be significantly higher among online Hispanics than the population in general.
The report's signature claim is that "Hispanics identify 51 hours of activity per day (aside from sleeping), and young people are engaged even more ... 64 hours per day.” No doubt, multitasking is taking place and the multiple real-time postings on the online forums of Spanish-language broadcasters confirm people are watching and surfing at the same time.
The report cites the desire to remain "connected" with family, friends and country of origin as the motivation for the heavy usage of cell phones, the Internet and television by online Hispanics. Despite a clear presence online (although much smaller than Hispanic television viewers) the report states that video is used less often in interactive advertising targeting Latinos than in the general market.
"I would say the U.S. Hispanic interactive market is similar to where general market interactive was three years ago," said Chandler.
[back to top]
Doug Darfield is the senior VP of Hispanic services for Nielsen Media. He previously worked in the research department of Univision, as well as at a Spanish-language radio company. Darfield recently spoke to Hispanic Television Update about the debate over whether or not to include country of origin as a criterion for Hispanics to form part of Nielsen samples. Darfield alluded to Robert Rose of Aim Tell-A-Vision, an independent producer of English-language television for Hispanic audiences, who has been fueling the debate, which Darfield dismissed as a "tempest in a teapot." An edited transcript follows:
Q: What are you testing at this moment in terms of country of origin?
A: I can’t stress to you how not important I think this is. [Laughter] The Census Bureau has changed its questionnaire and there is now the American Community Survey which asks the language question a little differently than they used to -- although it is still competency-based -- and it asks the country of origin question a little differently than they used to. Effectively, what we are doing is testing the ACS question.
Q: Why you are testing?
A: Basically, for my purposes, speaking almost more as an individual than for Nielsen, we have to put this thing to bed. Because I don't believe it really means anything. And what we are going to find out dollars-to-doughnuts is that we probably have more people born in the U.S. in the sample than we should. Despite the protestations of folks who are using this to try to cover for whatever. This is a good smokescreen. But let’s see. On the other hand, if it is something we can use as a reference point on our own data against the government data, then of course we always like to have that.
We have always been chary about this because we have been concerned this may have a chilling effect on undocumented persons. So what we are testing is at what point in time do we think that the household knows us well enough and is comfortable enough with us that they'll realize we have no sinister ulterior motives related to their legal status in asking them where they were born.
Q: Where do things stand now?
A: First off, to get the data from the whole sample obviously we have to go back and ask country of origin of people who have been in the sample for quite some time. In the context of the existing sample, it is more along the lines of just accumulating the information so that we can then go back and look at the viewing of these folks over time and go back and make comparisons against viewing levels. We get the data for a variety of reasons and, if nothing else, just to show everybody that in fact we were never overmeasuring people born outside the country.
There is no conspiracy here to thwart the development of programming for Hispanics in English.
It is amusing. The poor fellow [Robert Rose] really does believe there is some sort of conspiracy there. Getting the information from the old sample will show that this in fact is not what was going on and never was going on.
My own personal belief is that what we’re going to find out is that by controlling on language we are going to have the born inside/born outside number exactly where it needs to be because they are surrogates on some level.
We are going to see if adding it to the mix of data that we look at it at all improves our ability to measure Hispanics. We will also [determine] if it’s impacting our ability to recruit. We’ll analyze [that] when NHTI is shut down. Because that´s when we'll have all the data. And at that point we’ll share it with the community and we’ll talk about what we should do based on what we find. We might even be able to share some things before then, certainly by then.
Q: You expect to make a decision later this year?
A: It is not going to change anything. [Laughter.] This is one of history’s greatest tempests in a teapot, and I give kudos to old what’s-his-name there for stewing up the industry about absolutely nothing.
For my purposes what you are going to learn from the NHTI is whether you can do this without alienating the segment of the population and significantly lowering the cooperation rate. That to me is the key thing we are going to learn out of the NHTI.
Uphill Battle For Spanish-Language Kids' Programmers
(Excerpted from the April 2 issue of Multichannel News)
Spanish-language broadcasters focus little attention and effort on kids' programming, while cable networks targeting young viewers who speak that language suffer from limited carriage.
The Digital Race
How One Cable Operator Converted Its System in Four Months
(Excerpted from the April 2 issue of Multichannel News)
Going all-digital can happen in a hurry. And proof isn't far away.
It's in Puerto Rico. The Caribbean island's second largest cable operator, Liberty Cablevision, last year finished converting all of its 111,000 subscribers to entirely digital video services in a rapid-fire, $10 million program that led to the shut down of traditional analog service in roughly four months.
For more ... [back to top]
-
Ken Burns's 14-hour World War II documentary has yet to air on PBS but has prompted criticism for allegedly failing to include any Hispanic veterans. Politico, the recently-launched newspaper and Web site for political junkies, wrote about efforts by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to pressure PBS executives. The article "Hispanics Go To 'War' With PBS" quotes Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D-Texas) as stating, "There is a lot of outrage and anger and disappointment ... We've come so far, and then we haven't. It's our responsibility to put the squeeze on people and educate them."
For more ...
[back to top]
Fox Sports en Español’s five-part branded entertainment program El Reto Final Nissan won "best foreign language program" at NAMIC's annual Vision Awards on March 27.
Spanish-language children's network Sorpresa will add 50,000 subscribers in Puerto Rico and become available April 20 on OneLink Communications’ digital-basic lineup. "
WRITER:
EDITOR:
Eric Smith
646-746-6962
HispanicTV@reedbusiness.com
AD SALES:
Larry Dunn
646-746-6572
ldunn@reedbusiness.com
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
All rights reserved. |
|
