Urban Hispanics like their media hi-tech

Urban Hispanics like
their media hi-tech

Rich market for digital and interactive television

By David Everitt

    You might think that urban Hispanics are as interested in acquiring new digital media as other groups are.
    It turns out they’re more interested.
    That’s what a new Surveys Unlimited study tells us.
    "It’s clear from all the research we’ve done that the urban market scene provides a fabulous opportunity if folks pay attention," says Alisse Waterston, president of Surveys Unlimited, a division of Horowitz Associates.
    "Now, as more and more people pay attention to Latinos as a result of the new census data, we see that Hispanics can be a key market for service providers dealing in media services like broadband, digital TV and interactive TV."
    An interesting marketing observation, certainly, but how did Surveys Unlimited reach this conclusion?
    What’s the data to back it up?
    One area the study looked at was the potential reach for digital cable in the urban Hispanic community in the near future.
    Researchers determined the number of current digital-cable subscribers within each urban ethnic group, then asked those who weren’t already subscribing if they would be interested in signing up for digital cable over the next six months.
    By combining these two numbers, Surveys Unlimited concluded that digital cable penetration within six months could reach 39 percent in the urban Hispanic community.
    The figure for the urban market overall was 36 percent, and only 33 percent for white non-Hispanics.
    The study also breaks down this interest into specific digital-TV features.
     Responses from urban Hispanics were significantly more enthusiastic than the overall urban market for such things as better picture and sound quality and a greater number of basic cable channels.
     Indicative of their interest in broadband capabilities, Latinos also gave high responses to interactive program guides and video-on-demand.
     Agreeing with the study’s overall assessment of urban Hispanic interests in this area is Scott Gunderson-Rosa, director of communications for the League of United Latin American Citizens.
    "Traditionally Latinos don’t have much access to these digital services," he says, "so when these services start to become available, they would respond very positively."
     Assuming urban Hispanics are especially serious about subscribing to new media, what factors account for this interest?
     According to Waterston, the relative youthfulness of this ethnic group has a lot to do with it.
    The Surveys Unlimited study states that 50 percent of urban Hispanic consumers in this country are under the age of 35.
    Also, 59 percent of Hispanic households include people under 24, compared to 45 percent for the overall urban market. Younger people, of course, are natural consumers of new technology.
    "Minorities generally skew young, African-Americans as well as Latinos," says Waterston.
     "They tend to have more children, and also, in the case of Latinos, it has to do with migration patterns. We know from research done in the past that people coming to this country tend to be younger folks, those that are more able-bodied and more willing, those that are better able to provide a living and send remittances back to their families in their native community."
    But none of this means that a service provider just has to show up to drum up business. Successful marketing to this part of the urban population will require doing a little sociological homework, according to Waterston.
    Obviously, running campaigns in Spanish is important, but not if they're too generalized. "Marketers will have to know things about Latinos in general," she says, "but they also need to be more specific.
    "They need to be aware of specific Latino identities–Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and so forth–and they have to be able to address those specific subgroups."
     She also believes that a combination of English and Spanish languages could be helpful. "Hispanics usually regard themselves as both American and Latino, so you need to include both elements.
     "To give you an example, the results of one study showed that Spanish-speaking Latinos might want to use TV as a way to learn English, but that already-Americanized Latinos want to hear Spanish because it is an important part of their cultural identity."
    There might be some more mundane considerations too, says Gunderson-Rosa, such as the plain matter of dollars and cents.
    "The No. 1 problem, from the standpoint of access for Latinos, is cost. If the providers can bring the cost down, that would make a big difference.
    "I don’t know, for instance, how many people can afford the $50 a month for DSL service. And DishNet offers a package for Spanish language programming, which is great, but I don’t know if that many people can afford it."

-David Everitt covers social issues, television and technology for Media Life, writing from Huntington, N.Y.

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