Hispanic Media in the U.S.: Faring Better than the Mainstream Media

  Spanish-language media remains important to the nation’s growing and changing Hispanic population. And in the last year, this media sector tended to fare better overall than the mainstream English-language media, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

  Hispanic newspapers overall lost circulation in 2010, but not nearly to the extent of the English-language press. (English-language dailies saw a 5% decline for the six-month period from March to September 2010 compared with the same period the year before.)  And daily Hispanic papers grew circulation by 1.9%.

  Spanish-language television had an even more positive year. Univision’s audience continued to grow and now competes with ABC, CBS and NBC. Between Univision and Telemundo (and all of their stations), are expecting to bring in $1.5 billion in ad revenue.

  Hispanic radio and magazines also showed growth. The number of Spanish-language radio stations grew, and magazine ad spending increased about 5% in 2010, according to PEJ.

  On the digital front, while Hispanic Americans do not access the internet at the same rates as other Americans, there is growth. Bilingual Latinos are already heavily online.

  is the latest edition to the Ethnic chapter of the State of the Media 2011 annual report. The State of the Media 2011 is the eighth edition of PEJ’s annual report on the health and status of American journalism.

  Among the findings of the study:
•The total number of Hispanic newspapers remained stable in 2010 (832 versus 835 in 2009). •While daily audited newspapers grew circulation in 2010, weeklies saw a 2.5% decline to 11.08 million. This was still better performance than seen in English-language newspapers. Less-than-weeklies dropped slightly, 0.6%, to 4.92 million.
•Univision has plans to launch a 24-hour news network, Univision 24/7. The channel is expected to debut sometime in 2012.
•Bilingualism seems to have led to less Spanish-language television watching, though viewing there is still strong. Almost a quarter of Hispanics who speak mostly English at home, 24%, watch one to three hours of Spanish-language TV a day, according to data from Nielsen Media Research. Still, among those who mostly speak Spanish at home, 40% watch one to three hours of Spanish-language TV a day and another 26% watch more than three.   
•Univision radio took steps in 2010 to solidify its place in the radio market.
•Bilingual and English-dominant Latinos are far ahead of Spanish-dominant Latinos in many measures of digital usage. But internet usage among Spanish-dominant Latinos has increased from 36% in 2009 to 47% in 2010.
•The digital divide between Latinos and whites remained in 2010. About two-thirds of Latino (65%) and African American (66%) adults went online in 2010, compared with 77% of white adults. And only 45% of Latinos have broadband access at home, compared with 52% of blacks and 65% of whites.

  The report, “Hispanic Media: Faring Better than the Mainstream Media,” can be accessed on the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism website.   The Pew Hispanic Center and the Project for Excellence in Journalism are projects of the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan, non-advocacy research organization based in Washington, D.C. and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.